sarang

I should have done my homework about BT here. But I didn't, and bought Bluetake's i-Phono minis. Cool little headphones, but we all know that they don't work with Microsoft's ridiculous little BT stack. Not willing to let $100 headphones sit in my condo until Dell gets its act together, I bought the BT A2DP dongle ($60). And now the headphones work, kind of.

There are 2 main problems. First of all, the headphones themselves support two profiles, A2DP, which for those even more newb than me (is it possible?) is responsible for the audio, and AVRCP, which allows remote control of the PDA, MP3 player, etc. that the headphones are paired with. If Dell was not being a cheapskate when they designed the x51, these would both work with no dongle. Since they don't work, the dongle is required and unfortunately, it only supports A2DP, so there is no remote control, which defeats a large part of the purpose in having BT headphones.

Secondly, the audio quality is poor. There is a constant hiss, not overcomeable by toying with the volumes on the headphones and music player. And though this can be easily ignored with the right kind of music, that's not all. The signal frequently breaks up like a cell phone with one bar. It seems like there might be a correlation to what angle the dongle is held at and whether pressure is applied to it, but verification of this is inconsistent.

Has anyone else spent $160 on something that we already know doesn't work? If so, anyone have the same issues? Or any solutions?

I realize that I could have spent a lot less money and simply put up with the very minor inconvenience of a cord, not to mention have a product that provides high-quality audio and actually works. Well.. who isn't enamored with the idea of BT headphones? It was only a matter of time before someone went overboard with it.

Sarah