Belkin Or Socket Bluetooth

[bluedevils]

They both seem compatible with cacko, but what about other roms or the stock sharp rom (6000l).

The belkin is much cheaper, but how much does it stick out?  If it is the same or less than a socket *wifi* card, then I may go with that.  I haven't found any numbers to tell me if one uses less power than the other.

Thanks to all who respond.  Constructive opinions are welcomed

[speculatrix]

I have a socket BT card (just sold) which has very good low power performance - can surf a long time, unlike with wifi. they are the same size as CF, so don't stick out at all.

[Hrw]

I would rather avoid all BT cards which are based on Nokia DTL chipsets - this means Nokia DTL-1, Nokia DTL-4, Socket Rev E., Socket Rev F.

Why? They suck - no docs for making good driver so they need to be re-inserted after each suspend/resume (some distros do it via apm script), they are also limited to 230kbps - many cards can do 921kbps.

[bluedevils]

That's very good information to know.  For that reason I have decided to buy the belkin for $75 less.  The Etailer couldn't tell me what rev the socket card was.

[albertr]

I would rather avoid all BT cards which are based on Nokia DTL chipsets - this means Nokia DTL-1, Nokia DTL-4, Socket Rev E., Socket Rev F.

Why? They suck - no docs for making good driver so they need to be re-inserted after each suspend/resume (some distros do it via apm script), they are also limited to 230kbps - many cards can do 921kbps.
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Actually, I have to disagree with you. Awhile back I did some testing comparing throughput of different BT chipsets, and Nokia fired up surprisly well despite being the oldest one. Also, I wouldn't judge the features of hardware based upon just one driver in BlueZ distribution. I.e. in Affix Nokia-based cards can be suspended/resumed just fine.
-albertr

[bluedevils]

In the end the belkin was too big.  Both thickness and length.  Thickness was an issue because I can't fit both the socket wifi, money, my credit cards and a thick BT card in the piel case at the same time.  There was also the eject/reset problem, but that could have been easily solved.  The belkin is now part of the 6000's equipment.

I got a rev K socket card now.  Not only is it flush in the CF slot, but it is half the thickness.  The card was recognized by cardmanager, but I'm not getting anything when I use the set button on the bluetooth tab setting up bluetooth - ppp.  I used this with success on the belkin card.  I guess I will have to go commandline when I get home.

[speculatrix]

I got a rev K socket card now.  Not only is it flush in the CF slot, but it is half the thickness.  The card was recognized by cardmanager, but I'm not getting anything when I use the set button on the bluetooth tab setting up bluetooth - ppp.  I used this with success on the belkin card.  I guess I will have to go commandline when I get home.
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I found that PAN was ideal for bluetooth, my firewall at home is suse 9.3, and I use a regular $15 USB bluetooth dongle as a gateway. 'cos my DSL is only 512k, it's not much slower than wifi, but the battery life saving is amazing.

The cacko PAN daemon worked for me perfectly... ONCE I'd set up the PIN in /etc/bluetooth, and done "sdptool browse xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" to get the zaurus to pair with the gateway.

I think when using windows as a gateway you have to use ppp over bluetooth, which is not as efficient, and takes a bit of fiddling around with the usual widcomm stack settings. If you want details of that I can provide them, as it's the same process as when using a Palm with bt.