Saw this little dongle at Office Max the other day and thought “hey that’s a dongle I could have used 5 years ago!” when I owned a Dell Inspiron 8600 and desperately needed a bluetooth connection with my Nokia cellphone. Dell was selling bluetooth with the 8600 model for a US$500 premium, too expensive for something I’d use occasionally.

Fast forward to 2008… look here, the same functionality for about US$5!

The Tiny USB 2.0 Bluetooth Doogle Adapter for PC Laptop, sold here, almost vanishes into your USB port. If you’ve got a bluetooth mouse with “giant” dongles that always get in the way, this is a good replacement.

I hope, though, that 5 years from now these would offer “pass-through” ability. It still consumes a USB port and it would be awesome if you could still use the port the dongle uses. Oh well, maybe soon, eh?

Here are the specifications:

Size: 20x14x4mm, or 0.78×0.55×0.15in
Net Weight: 2g, or 0.07oz
Bluetooth Compliant: V2.0/V1.2
Supporting Profiles: Networking, Dial-up, Fax, LAN access, and Headset
Operation System: Windows98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, VISTA
Interface: USB compliance
Symbol Rate: 3Mbps
Receiving/ Sending Range: 0-100m