Nontrivial Exercises

Using a Bluetooth Headset on my Toshiba M200 - Final Update

In my two previous posts about this topic, I described my efforts to use a Bluetooth headset (a Motorola HS850 in my case) with my Toshiba M200 Tablet PC. I have resolved the issues I noted previously and this is now fully working. Here’s a summary of what you need to do, since it is a bit confusing if you use the US Toshiba support website:

1. Use the latest Toshiba Bluetooth driver that supports the headset service. You cannot find this driver on the US Toshiba support website, so go to the European site. At the time of writing this, the latest version is 4.00.30.
2. Install the driver, but DO NOT set-up or discover any Bluetooth devices (i.e. your headset) until you reboot. This was my problem – my impatience got the best of me and I configured and discovered my headset before I rebooted, which messed up the configuration such that I had to uninstall the driver and reinstall it to get it to work.
3. After rebooting, open the Bluetooth utility (double click on the Bluetooth icon in the system tray) and configure your headset. You’ll then get a shortcut on your desktop for your headset – just open the shortcut whenever you want to connect to your headset.

I called Toshiba technical support to ask them about the Bluetooth driver. They confirmed that the Bluetooth drivers will work with any Toshiba laptop – i.e. there is no difference between the Bluetooth hardware on their laptops. This is despite what the US support site suggests, since they have different downloads of the V2 drivers for each different laptop model.

Then, when I asked them why you have to go to the European support site to obtain the latest Bluetooth driver, the support rep told me that they were “not allowed” to put the driver on the US site, though he didn’t know why.

Perhaps Toshiba wants to deliberately confuse US customers who want to use Bluetooth headsets – it sure feels that way. At least you can get it to work, though you have to dig a little bit to find the right driver.

Again, here is the link to download the latest Bluetooth driver that will support the headset profile on any Toshiba laptop:

http://aps.toshiba-tro.de/bluetooth/directlink.php?snr=2

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