Bluetooth Internet Connection Cont...
So I got home and booted up almost immediately because I wanted to try the Bluetooth connection thing and wouldn't you know it, the background services that the Nokia stuff uses to sync died WHILE BOOTING UP. I was using these yesterday without a problem, but it's like someone somewhere decided that I wasn't allowed to play today, so killed these services immediately. Uuuughh!
Before I go any further, Dr. Watson is a pain in the ass. An app dies, this weird, useless process starts up and then NEVER goes away. Why? I killed it. I had to doubly killed it because Windows 2000 wanted to keep installing it behind my back again, but I found his home and killed it dead.
Okay, so to get the sync working I rebooted and re-installed and rebooted and uninstalled and looked for other stuff that I may have done to wack this process and basically drove myself crazy for SEVERAL HOURS. I finally downloaded the latest Bluetooth drivers that I found on a forum and the latest Nokia stuff, rebooted and finally it works again (who knows what will happen mysteriously tomorrow).
The latest Bluetooth drivers actually help a lot. They clear up the system a bit - not much, it's still bewildering for me and I'm a techie - but enough to make it clear which port I was using, etc. It was BECAUSE of this clarity I realized what was going on with the whole Bluetooth Internet Connection thing: It's the same as sharing out any Internet connection on Windows 2000. If you're not familiar with it, here's the idea: If you have a connection to the internet - say via ADSL - and you want to share it with the rest of your house - say via WiFi - you have to go into the "Sharing" tab on your network card's properties page and tell it to share. This makes the other network card's IP address something like 192.168.0.1 and allows it to use the internet connection via a sort of mini dhcp process.
It's the same thing for the Bluetooth connection. You're using the Bluetooth's built in networking support just like WiFi and you're sharing your connection out to the phone. Oh, I haven't mentioned that it worked yet, have I? Yeah! It works pretty well. All the install problems gave me pause about how easy it would be to make a cool UPP app that say my Mom could install, but it does work.
There are some problems with the connection - for some reason it keeps timing out and asking me if I want to connect again. I'm not sure why... the connection is mimicking a GPRS connection so there's obviously something it's missing. Email flies, however, so I guess some apps work better than others. Doris kept on bugging me for each file it need to download (each image on a page). More testing needed, but I'm quite happy so far.
One more thing, a coworker of mine has the latest iPaq with Bluetooth and we were able to connect and share business cards. It actually was a little more difficult than the Infrared, but still - we were across the room from each other, so it counted. ;-)
-Russ