Setup

The Bluetake Wireless Printing Kit is a piece of cake to install. The setup consists of two parts. The first part involves setting up the Bluetake BT210 Bluetooth Printer Adapter on a USB capable printer. The second step involves connecting the Bluetake BT007X USB adapter on your target PC.

Bluetake includes a simple user manual for those in need of some guidance.

We just had to put this in here - Bluetake - please use the spell checker on your documents!

Setting up the BT210

There is one major requirement for all of this to work - make sure your printer has a USB port. Most current printers will support this interface but many older ones do not. Bluetake mentions (in small print) that users should not use any parallel to USB adapters if they have older printers. Now that we got that straightened out, setting up the BT210 is a simple matter of connector the BT210 Printer Adapter to the USB port on the printer.

The USB Printer Adapter needs power to run so connect the AC adapter to the receptacle on the adapter. The connection between the Printer Adapter and the printer is successful if the LED's of the Bluetooth USB Printer Adapter are blinking.

The USB connector on the Printer Adapter rotates to allow you to fit the device in a variety of printer designs. However, if your printer's USB port surroundings are cluttered, you may have problems connecting the Bluetooth Printer Adapter. You could always look for an extension cable but it would have been nice if Bluetake included a short extension cable in the package. Here's a side shot of the BT210 installed on our HP Officejet 7130:

Now that the Printer Adapter is connected to the printer, you need to add Bluetooth capabilities to your PC. This is where the BT007X USB Adapter comes in.

Setting up the BT007X

If you already have a Bluetooth hub on your PC, then you can skip this step. Heck you shouldn't even own the BT007X if that's the case.

Setting up the Bluetake BT007X USB Adapter consists of two steps:

Step 1: Connect the BT007X to an available USB port on your PC.

Step 2: Install the included software found on the "Bluetooth USB Adapter Software CD".

The software application installs the necessary Bluetooth software stack onto your PC. The setup process will also warn you with a dialog box that there is no Microsoft approved driver verification program for Bluetooth drivers as of yet.

The setup process will guide you through the Microsoft Bluetooth setup which includes making services available from your Bluetooth transmitter. Here is a picture of the various services which you can make available from your PC via the Bluetooth network.

If anyone with a Bluetooth device comes within range of your PC, they can view the available services on your PC and make requests for these services pending approval from the PC's user.

Once the setup is finished, you will find a new icon on your desktop called "My Bluetooth Places". Double-Click the icon and you will be presented with the following screen:

There are four major tasks you can accomplish with this folder:

1. Bluetooth Setup Wizard - clicking on this task will reveal the setup wizard found during the software setup.
   
   
2. View My Bluetooth Services - clicking on this will show you all the services enabled on your PC (shown earlier)
3. View devices in range - clicking on this will reveal all the Bluetooth capable devices within your USB dongle's antenna's reach (refer below)
4. View or modify configuration - clicking on this will open up the Bluetooth Configuraton Dialog box.
   
   

Although the BT007X is a generic Bluetooth USB dongle, we'll focus on the Wireless Printer capabilities of the Bluetake package for this review. Over time, we'll look into the other services that these Bluetooth devices enable for your PC.

To finish setting up your wireless printer setup, you'll need to select the "View devices in range" task found under "My Bluetooth Places". If you are in range, you should see an icon for the Bluetake BT210 Bluetooth Printer Adapter.

Once the printer drivers are installed, you should print out a test page to verify the connections and drivers are properly installed on your PC. If the test page looks good, then you're ready to proceed.

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