If you bought your computer before the blue tooth revolution, you are probably finding many of your newer gadgets cannot take advantage of their wireless connectivity capabilities. For under $50 you have a few options of buying a blue tooth adapter that can change that. Plugging one into a USB port on your computer can make connecting wireless blue tooth devices possible.

Once you have installed the blue tooth adapter you can click on the device and then choose to view all devices in range. If you are attempting to use a blue tooth enabled keyboard, for example, try typing. If nothing shows on the screen, go back to the menu and choose the blue tooth setup wizard and follow the on-screen instructions.

On most blue tooth adapters, there are three lights to let you know what is going on with the adapter. A red light indicates the device is not working, while a green light means the device is recognized by the computer and is communicating. If you have a white light it means the device is recognized and connected.

Software Required To Make Adapted Functional

If for some reason when you bought your blue tooth adapter it did not come with the needed software to make it work, you can go online to the manufacturers website and download a copy onto the computer on which the device will be connected. You will first need to register your product and then visit a file transfer site. For example, if you have purchased a blue tooth adapter from Kensington, you can register at www.register.kensington.com. Once you have registered your can visit the download site at ftp://ftp.kensington.com/BT/. to download the software.

While many may be enthralled by the notion of wireless communication between their devices that may also be hesitant due to security concerns. It should be pointed out that while every precaution is used on wireless transmission, including devices through a blue tooth adapter, it is always possible an experienced hacker can enter your system. It should also be noted that due to the limited range of the blue tooth signal, a person or devices would need to be fairly close to pick out the signal.

Blue tooth throughput, which is the rate of transmission, is a maximum of 768 kbps while many devices, such as a personal data assistant may have a transmission speed of 56 kbps. The speed of the devices chipset will determine the communication speed and has nothing to do with the speed of the blue tooth connection.