Need help using the built in bluetooth on my laptop.

Got a couple of laptops for gifts for others this recent christmas. Got an extra one of these for myself.

http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/as7520.htm

I bought them both from newegg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115410

I have the bluetooth button on the laptop and I've searched and searched on how to find some application to run a search for my bluetooth but nothing. I downloaded this driver thinking this would correct the problem:

Bluetooth_Broadcom_v6.0.1.5000_Vista

Again nothing...

I went into the help section of my vista and I got these directions:

Click the Start button , click Control Panel, click Hardware and Sound, and then click Bluetooth Devices.

There is no "bluetooth devices".

Can anyone help me. If I was wrong and for some reason this laptop does not have a built in bluetooth antenna is there a inexpensive solution so I can use my current bluetooth with my laptop?

 

LOL!
My brother asked me that very same question six months ago. He bought a cheap Acer without BT but didn't know since he had the button and went through exactly the same steps as you
I had an Acer (POS) a couple years ago that had the BT button as well even though there was no BT in the machine. Acer are just such lazy retards and the products so cheap that they use the same enclosure for everything. I too thought merrily that I had BT until I checked up on it.

If you look at the newegg page you linked to you will see that nowhere is bluetooth mentioned.

Congrats to Acer for being directly user unfriendly yet again.

 

My sister had the same problem when she got her acer laptop, basically as OleJ said, they use the same enclosure for each series of laptops but the hardware inside is removed to cut costs. I think the only way is to buy a bluetooth USB dongle, they are relatively cheap but you will have something poking out the side of your laptop when you want to use BT and it uses a USB port.

 

Ah ok a dongle.

So let me make sure I understand this then. I can purchase a usb bluetooth dongle device. Something like this:

Amazon.com: BLUETOOTH 1.2/2.0 USB 2.0 100M: Electronics

It comes with software. I'll install it and I can link up my current headset up to my laptop so I can use it as a microphone for voice programs like speech to text or ventrillo for voice over net talking to other people.

Just trying to make sure I buy the right device.

 

Since XP has built in support for BT it shouldn't be necessary to install anything but the driver for the dongle. And yes; if your headset is BT then you'll be able to use it with the computer.

Happy New Year!

 

OS Bluetooth support depends entirely on the chipset used.

The best way to check if you have bluetooth is to check in the BIOS, normally there'll be a seperate option to enable/disable it.