Today, I received a fancy new Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter 8000 mouse courtesy of Microsoft. This is a Bluetooth enabled mouse with some useful extra buttons for slide advance and a built in laser pointer when presenting. It is a nice mobile mouse that, while not without flaws, I would still recommend. Anyway, I wanted to use my Dell's built-in Bluetooth model (the Dell Wireless 350 Bluetooth Module) rather than the supplied Microsoft Bluetooth USB dongle. It was then that I noticed my Bluetooth wasn't working properly under Vista - when I searched for new devices, it just wasn't finding any.
I had a bit of a search around, and people were suggesting all sorts of nasty hacks. In the end, I came across the new official Dell drivers that were posted on the 26th January 2007 so I'm making this post to hopefully get caught in the search indexes and help out a few other fellow early adopters. To download the Dell Wireless 350 drivers for Windows Vista - visit the official Dell site. The install flashes the Bluetooth chipset and installs all the stuff necessary to get your Bluetooth up and running. I also downloaded the Reliability update for USB stack in Windows Vista 32-bit (KB925528) (not sure if I needed to or not, it just sounded like a good thing) and the latest version of Microsoft excellent IntelliPoint software.
Thanks for the tip Martin. How do you find the Precision laptops? Iâm in the market for a new laptop and am thinking of getting a Dell âworkstationâ laptop.
Iâve found mine very good and very reliable. Itâs a bit chunky looking but certainly has the power to run a VPC or two while doing standard development type tasks. For me it strikes the right balance between battery life and raw power â I have the second battery that slots into the removable media bay and this allows me to get work done when on the road. I have an M70 which is feeling a little dated â the M90 looks like a nice little machine and they have updated the case. I am very jealous of the Core2 Duo action â I could do with some of that :-). I travel a bit to exhibitions etc and I see a few of the Precision range of laptops around which makes me feel in good company.
BTW â I went for the 1680 x 1050 resolution internal screen as that gives me plenty of real estate without being too large to carry but easy enough to read when running at 96dpi in native resolution.
In terms of alternatives, the Apple Mac Book pro is nice â however I still think I would prefer a Dell for day-to-day work because there are still a few small niggles when running Vista on a Mac machine (small things like keyboard mappings etc). Other folks seem to also like the Toshibas, but I prefer to customize the build more (however I would like tablet PC functionality at times). People in my company have a habit of purchasing from âboutiqueâ high-performance machine vendors and I think I'm seen as quite boring with my choice of a Dell, however Iâve been happy with it.
I have no complaints at all with the build quality of mine which was made in Dell's EMEA assembly plant not that far from me in Ireland.
It seems that Microsoft has removed Bluetooth support from Vista, that was included in Windows XP SP2. Did your Dell update include a bluetooth utility?
David,
The base install of Vista included some Bluetooth support for me. The Dell drivers flashed the bluetooth chipset in my laptop then installed an updated driver - however I think all the Bluetooth dialogs are Vista ones (and very similar tp Win XP)