Friday, July 14, 2006

My tryst with stereo bluetooth

I'm what some may call an early adopter. I'm the kinda guy who tries all those new hi-tech gadgets the minute they're launched. I've signed up for the beta of almost every cool web2.0 service that has been launched in the past six months.. And of course, I'm a reader of Techcrunch, Mashable, Engadget et al...

Being an 'early adopter' is both good and bad.. It's good because, well, you know about and use all the cool new devices and websites out there.. you can be the one who tells all your friends about it first.. and of course, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you are ahead of others around you when it comes to.. well.. being hi-tech!

On the other hand, being an early adopter exposes you to the risk of bugs and incomplete solutions.. all betas have some flaws or the other, and you've got to deal with it.. this is all fine when you aren't shelling out any of your money for trying out these things.. but the problem arises when you rush to buy a cool new hi-tech gadget and realize that you've basically ended up wasting money on a piece of junk.

Well, this is exactly what happened to me. I always have some problem or the other with the status quo. I have some sort of aversion to the way things are being done now. Whether its my email client, or my phone, or even my to-do list.. i always look out for ways i can improve the functionality or features of the stuff that i use...

This same attitude triggered my mind one day when I was fiddling around with my phone - a sony ericsson K750i. I spent over S$500 on it and the only thing that I was actually using it for was calls and the occasional photo. This thing had brilliant features on it! An awesome MP3 player, a memory card slot, bluetooth, etc, etc. Around the same point of time, i was also mulling over the idea of buying an Ipod.. and then these two thoughts collided and i decided to act smart :P

I thought if i could buy a big memory stick for my phone + get a stereo bluetooth headset (a total investment of about 120 bucks), i could have an mp3 player PLUS have the ability to wirelessly listen to my music on the headset.. that's something that you can't do even on an ipod.. so i went ahead and ordered a 2 gb memory stick and the jensen stereo headset on buy.com.. the headset even came with a BT transmitter with a normal 3.5 mm jack.. so i could stream music from my office computer and listen to it on the wireless headset.. cool right! i could walk around office listening to music :)

and then all the stuff arrived.. and to my disgust, i realized that the freakin thing doesn't work with my phone.. what's worse it doesn't work with almost every music phone on the market.. it can be used for calls n shit.. but that's not what i bought it for.. this thing used a technology called A2DP that was at such an early stage that most phone manufacturers hadn't even put it on their phones! To top it off, my phone doesnt have a 3.5 mm jack (bloody Sony and their proprietary bullshit).. so i couldn't even use their BT transmitter.. so right now, i just use the headset for listening to music from my comp (60 bucks i spent for that!).. and my memory card (another 60 bucks) is rotting away in the innards of my phone...

so much for being an early adopter.. now i'm back to mulling over the ipod (atleast i can use my BT transmitter with that).

psycho.

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