You see it listed on the vast majority of phones now, or you see people wearing the odd little headsets on their ear with no wires running to them, but what is Bluetooth really?

Over the past few years Bluetooth, a form of wireless communication protocol, has slowly been creeping it’s way on to cell phones, laptops and other mobile devices. You can add it to a desktop computer if you choose to, but it rarely comes pre-installed. The main drive of the technology is allowing you to use wireless headsets with your cell phone, but they also can work well with laptops for when you want to talk on programs such as Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

One of the nice things is most Bluetooth headsets can be used with more than one device, so you can use the same one with your phone and your laptop.  In the reverse, most devices can connect to more than one other item, so you can use a Bluetooth headset with your laptop as well as a Bluetooth powered mouse, or use it to connect your phone and laptop together to use it as a modem or sync data.

This technology may seem scary, but most devices come with very easy, straightforward directions that tell you how to “pair” (make it talk to another device) very easily.  Once you have them paired to each other they will continue to recognize one another whenever they are near each other and turned on.

One interesting note is that Bluetooth runs on the 2.4GHz radio frequency, which is yet another item crowding the radio band, and hence why we talked about you may want to buy 5.8GHz cordless phones in the post 2.4 GHz vs 5.8 GHz Cordless Phones.  That is also another point in that Bluetooth is finally creeping into cordless phones, but it is taking some time.