Bluetooth 4.0 Devices To Make the Scene Later This Year

Engadget is reporting that new Bluetooth 4.0 devices could be hitting the scene later this year, and it looks like Bluetooth low energy has been added to the spec. "But don't expect any dramatic changes in battery life for most of your gadgets: while the low energy spec introduces connectivity to a host of lower-power devices that have in the past relied on proprietary technology (such as watches, pedometers, and cats), your traditional Bluetooth devices, such as phones and laptops, will consume roughly the same amount of power. Indeed, the low energy spec is merely throwing smaller devices (with smaller amounts of data to transfer) in to the mix: if you want Trans-Siberian Orchestra to sound as glorious as ever on your wireless headphones, you'll need to push as much data (and hence draw as much power) with version 4 as you would with version 3."

Comments

Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[willoughby]

If I go to the Logitech website & check out wireless mouses I see 12 wireless of which 2 are Bluetooth. At the Kensington website there are 17 wireless mouses but only 2 are Bluetooth. Obviously I haven't kept up with wireless technologies but I thought Bluetooth was developed mainly with mouses & keyboards in mind. Are manufacturers shunning the technology or are users avoiding it? Are there problems with Bluetooth devices which a shopper should be aware of?

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Cyko_01]

because those low-power proprietary cats are just so efficient.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Gertlex]

My first logitech mouse was a bluetooth one. It worked nicely, but I always had troubles with the pairing, e.g. having to partly redo it in some way or another. There was also the delay when "waking up" the mouse.

Their more recent mice with the extremely small usb receivers work flawlessly and are plug and play. I carry one around my college campus for use with campus computers (the mice on campus suck, and it helps me remember not to forget my usb drive...).

I also use bluetooth headphones with my laptop, and connection quality is much better when I only have one device paired at a time.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[sconeu]

You mean these?

I don't think so.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Yaztromo]

All of Apple's wireless mice and Bluetooth.

I think the biggest problem for hardware manufacturers and consumers is that, outside of Apple, Bluetooth often isn't available as an option for most PC buyers. Apple puts it into every laptop and desktop system they sell.

Joe PC User on the other hand, just wants a mouse and keyboard to work, and when they buy wireless, they expect that it will come with everything they need for a wireless experience. For many years now, manufacturers simply ship with a USB-based dongle.

Now as to why that USB dongle isn't Bluetooth, my guesses are a) licensing, and b) drivers. Up until somewhat more recently, Bluetooth on Windows was a serious PITA. Official Windows Bluetooth support didn't appear until XP SP2, and prior to that manufacturers of Bluetooth add-ons had to provide their own drivers. Because they couldn't guarantee for some years what SP level you were at, they continued to ship those drivers. Having the manufacturers drivers and SP2 installed simultaneously was a huge mess -- I remember in 2006 helping a friend setup a Bluetooth headset with Skype on XP SP2, and there was a massive and conflicting mess of OEM drivers and Microsoft's stack that would have sent lesser mortals running for the hills (or at least to the store to return their Bluetooth devices).

Microsoft's late support seems to have driven PC manufacturers to waffle on shipping with built-in Bluetooth, and to try to keep costs down, many still apparently don't (especially outside the portable sector). I've been running Bluetooth mice and keyboards (and other items) for nearly six years now on my Macs -- with standardized support and no driver issues, it's been way easier to sell Bluetooth to the Mac-using public, and that's still the market where you seem to find the majority of consumer-grade Bluetooth devices for PC's aimed towards.

Yaz.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Amouth]

i love Bluetooth when it works.

the key there is when it works.

alot of manufacturers don't want to pay licencing costs - and on top of that they don't want to deal with licencing a decent BT stack for the end-user to install.

Its easier for them to just make a really simple 27mhz frequency mouse/KB and make people plug in a dongle. not so bad now that they have actually gotten really damn small but still annoying.

It might help now that win 7 has some decent BT support and built in profiles in it's stack.. where as XP had basic serial and HID and that was it.

What BT failed with was allowing everyone and their brothers to make incompatible stacks.. the idea of profiles is good and should be all that is needed - it should be required for a stack to support an API and a device profile to accomplish it's task via the API.. with no half ass stack implementations.

Instead we have the mess we have now.. luckily my laptop came with the Toshiba Stack which is by far the most developed and compatible stack - and i use it to connect just about everything KB/Mouse/headphones/Phone/PDA it makes life easy when it works.. but i can't tell you the countless hours i have spent to get everything to work so that i didn't have to fiddle with it every-time i wanted to pair something.

now if only i could get Pandora's Player to listen to Windows Media controls i'd be set.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[sakdoctor]

b) drivers

I was surprised when I plugged a Belkin Mini Bluetooth Adapter, into a Ubuntu system and it plugged-and-played. Super.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[DigiShaman]

Logitech makes the Bluetooth Mouse M555b model. After breaking my Mac Might Mouse into three pieces out of frustration, I purchased the M555b. So far, I haven't experienced any cursor lag our connectivity dropout. I'm very pleased with Logitech.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Anonymous Coward]

My other issue is more of the tinfoil hat type. BlueTooth has decent security. Pair up two devices (could be as simple as typing in a 4 digit code printed on the bottom of one device into the computer, or just plugging the device in a USB port to charge and exchange pairing info that way), and every piece of information is encrypted.

With the wireless technologies, who knows if the packets are encrypted. It may not sound like much, but one might not know if someone is just sitting there with a listening device and logging keystrokes. Even a mouse's input can be useful to an attacker. A BlueTooth hard disk sending information could be a jackpot, especially if one could get access to it.

This is why I wish makers of wireless mice and accessories would standardize on BlueTooth, or at the minimum, have some type of key negotiated during an offline pairing process and the information sent over the air be encrypted. This doesn't even need to be a public/private key exchange. Both devices could just generate a random 256 bit key while they are plugged into each other, and when doing OTA communication, do a DH key exchange, encrypting the process with the pre-shared key, similar to how WPA2-PSK works.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Are there problems with Bluetooth devices which a shopper should be aware of?

I stopped using a BT mouse on my laptop because it wouldn't always wake up. I *think* it's because I turned off the mouse to save power (instead of just letting it sleep). It'd lose it's pairing credentials and have to negotiate with the OS again. I bought a Logitech mouse and the USB dongle was already permenantly paired to the mouse. Plug in, wait like 2 seconds, then I have a mouse.

Maybe the mouse just sucked, I dunno. Don't care, either. I'm so sick of tinkering with things like that it's not even funny.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[dgatwood]

Sounds like the mouse sucked, yes. That's certainly not normal. With good hardware, you have to explicitly hit a button to cause it to repair.

As for me, I won't buy wireless hardware that isn't Bluetooth. Bluetooth gear, in my experience, works reliably at 20-30 feet on average. Non-bluetooth gear gets jammed by random environmental noise and barely works at a foot or two from the receiver. I've seen this with many, many wireless keyboards and mice from many companies (including the major ones).

Proprietary communications technology SUCKS. A few bad devices notwithstanding, Bluetooth devices will always be more reliable than proprietary hardware because Bluetooth has hundreds of companies all working together to design the communication protocols and hardware instead of one company hacking something together on their own. When it comes to keyboards, mice, trackballs, etc., if it's not Bluetooth, as far as I'm concerned, it isn't really wireless.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[no1nose]

I actually do the same thing. I think it would be cool if the USB dongle part of the wireless mouse had 8 Gigs or flash!

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

....Bluetooth devices will always be more reliable than proprietary hardware because Bluetooth has hundreds of companies all working together to design the communication protocols and hardware instead of one company hacking something together on their own.

That's exactly the reason why BT devices wouldn't be reliable. The dudes making their own proprietary protocol can make their own assumptions about what will connect. That's why I don't need to, for example, pair my mouse and its USB dongle. Ever.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Dynedain]

I only have a wireless keyboard/mouse combo for my HTPC.

For all the desktops I use, I stick with wired keyboards and mice. No messing with batteries. No messing with whether the device is properly synched or not. Good luck using a bluetooth keyboard in the BIOS for example.

The two cables from a keyboard and mouse really isn't that bad. Bluetooth headsets or microphones I'd be much more likely to consider, and game controllers (like the Wiimote) make a lot sense. But it's a bit of a solution in search of a problem on the desktop, IMHO.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[FooAtWFU]

The PC laptop market also has a decent level of support for Bluetooth. Certainly better than the desktop market, anyway.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Anonymous Coward]

For F's sake! Mice!

I'm not even a native speaker and that annoyed the s4!t out of me.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[peragrin]

Exactly. at my work a coworker has a non bluetooth wireless mouse. it comes with a USB extension because if the usb dongle isn't within 3-4 feet of the mouse it doesn't work at all.

what's the point of having a wireless mouse if you have to have a wire running up to the damn mouse anyways?

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Tycho]

Oddly enough I had nothing but trouble with the Toshiba stack. I have an older Microsoft keyboard that uses Bluetooth 1.1 along with a high powered Class 1 Bluetooth 2.0 adapter from Cambridge Silicon Radio and it dropped keystrokes like crazy and the connection would frequently break and need to be reconnected manual with the Toshiba stack. The keyboard seems to work fine with the Bluetooth stack in Windows XP, but the stack in XP is limited, but actually works as intended. This computer does have an Intel ICH7 southbridge, which has trouble connecting to USB bluetooth adapters behind a USB hub, however, my BT adapter is connected directly to the computer and is not behind a USB hub.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[gtluke]

It's because my mouse and keyboard are 3 feet from my computer and don't need to be wireless. The convenience of wireless is ruined by the inconvenience of batteries

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[dgatwood]

You're grossly underestimating how hard it is to get the physical layer working with sufficient noise immunity. When designing a cheap device, you can't spend a lot of money on R&D. You have two choices:

• Custom hardware. With custom hardware, you first have to make a reliable physical layer that moves the bits through the air reliably even in the presence of interference. Then, you have to write custom drivers for the transmitter silicon, custom drivers for the device on the other end, and custom firmware for the device.
• Bluetooth hardware. With bluetooth hardware, the physical layer is basically designed and debugged for you except for the antenna. The drivers for the transmitter are written for you. So you just have to write some very minimal custom firmware for the device to map electrical inputs to buttons and *maybe* write a custom driver for the device if you're doing something particularly unusual (e.g. handlers for extra buttons).

If your hardware sucks and you can't reliably get a signal through the noise (which has been the case with almost every non-Bluetooth wireless device I've seen), you're pretty much screwed. By contrast, if your firmware sucks in the first rev, it's no big deal. You just flash the thing with new firmware. That's the advantage to using Bluetooth. The hardware layer is already completely designed and debugged for you, so you can focus on the protocol layer above it and get that right instead of having to do that *and* build your own (usually awful) hardware.

I view these things basically the same way as companies that write custom crypto algorithms. The results are almost invariably worse than if they used off-the-shelf technology underneath and focused on the upper layers instead.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[peppepz]

I also prefer a cable over the hassle of having to recharge two sets of batteries to keep my keyboard running. I think a nice solution would be to have Bluetooth devices recharge via USB, and work as USB/HID devices while doing so. That's how the PlayStation 3 controllers work. This way, when your keyboard's batteries are running out, you just plug the usb cable and keep using the keyboard in wired mode, until they're charged.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

You're still dealing with multiple vendors using multiple hardware configurations on a protocol intended to do a lot more than just ferry mouse inputs around.

Okay, I think you know a lot more about the inner workings of these devices than I do. Don't worry, I'm not challenging you there. But I don't think this is case of bad drivers or even a faulty implementation. I think it's a case of bluetooth having a more complex set up so it can support more devices without being a big security risk. I think what's going on is it's losing its connection with the mouse and wanting to reauthorize it before it starts doing its bidding. I would even be willing to bet that it isn't the software or the driver, but the OS doing this!

Logitech has non of this to worry about. They built a to-the-point device that doesn't even require a special driver. Yes, that's something they have to ramp up to learn, radiodigital is not easy. But at least they don't have to go through near as much testing or extra effort to support other devices. I think you're right, I don't have a full grasp of what it takes to get a signal to a device and back. But I think you're underestimating what sort of effort it takes to get one of these devices up and running on all the major OS's with a significant segment of cards it'll likely be talking to. It's all fine and good that it adheres to the spec, but is the real world that friendly about it or are they going to have to deal with problems like the OS cutting off communication to it for 'security reasons'?

That said, I'm not 100% sold on the idea that I'm right and you're wrong. So please don't feel like I'm not paying attention to what you said.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[peppepz]

Good luck using a bluetooth keyboard in the BIOS for example.

By the way, if you have a Bluetooth dongle with HID support, a Bluetooth keyboard will work even in the BIOS. It will be seen as a standard USB/HID device. Just tested it with Apple's wireless keyboard on two different PCs.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[priegog]

I don't know the answer to your question, but I made myself the same question when I was in the market for one (tablet pc, wanted a mouse and keyboard that could connect wirelessly without having to use a specialized dongle). In the end I ended up hitting ebay and seeing the numerous no-brand chinese mice they had. I figured for less than 10 bucks, I had nothing to lose. So I selected one with my requirements (5 buttons, on/off switch [for travelling]), being able to use AAA batteries, and to have a mini-usb charging jack [so that I wouldn't need to take extra/propietary/rare charging cables with me). It arrived, and I have to say it's great: It looks sleek, super comfortable, 4 dpi settings (not that that's super useful), a charge lasts for several weeks (and I don't turn it off via the switch when I'm at home), it charges in a couple of hours (and allows me to use it while charging), the pairing is deadbeat simple (doesn't need a pincode, apparently it's a new bluetooth 2.1 thing), and when it goes into deep sleep (after a half an hour of not using it or so), it takes +/- half a second to establish the connection when you wake it up (by pressing any button) using ubuntu, don't know if it would be different in windows. So it really makes me wonder: why would I pay $60 (or more) to logitech or some other brand for something that the chinese got really really right and are charging a fraction of it for? From this mouse I can only draw the conclusions that either the chinese are using the same chipsets they put into big brand mice, or the bluetooth standard has really gotten so good that devices just work the way they should...

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[fuliginous]

Price I think you'll find. It is only the last two years that the price on the bluetooth chip has been low enough for it to begin proliferation into low end (price wise) consumables.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[fuliginous]

The Bluetooth members meet 4 times (I think) per year at week long unplug fests where they all try their current and coming components against all other attendees to make sure they work together. They rotate through short time slots (almost like bluetooth channel hopping:-) to try and make sure every device meets every other.

They spend a lot of time often sending 5 or 6 teams with different items each to test. So if a claimed bluetooth device has problems the maker probably bought the cheap poor chip rather than marginally better component.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[dgatwood]

The thing is, to the degree that the USB device doesn't require a special driver, that's because their hardware is conforming to the USB HID spec, which is a lot like conforming to the Bluetooth HID spec, just without the pairing/key exchange stuff.

It's true that the Bluetooth spec is a lot more complex because you have software control over the key exchange process on the user's machine (as opposed to presumably having to do some similar process once at the factory). Fortunately, that's all somebody else's problem (the silicon vendor). This makes it important to choose wisely when picking the Bluetooth silicon, but that's still a lot easier than designing equivalent parts from scratch.

I think what's going on is it's losing its connection with the mouse and wanting to reauthorize it before it starts doing its bidding. I would even be willing to bet that it isn't the software or the driver, but the OS doing this!

I'm not a Bluetooth protocol specialist by any means, but IIRC, the device generates a key, and both ends have to store that key. The computer doesn't reject a device arbitrarily. Communication fails because the device's key no longer matches any key that the computer knows, and thus the computer cannot talk to the device at all. It seems unlikely that the computer would lose a key unless the stack implementation is just plain broken. After all, it has a hard drive to write the keys onto. It's much more likely that the device itself is losing the key or is deciding to generate a new key for some reason, probably either because of the pairing button getting pressed (intentionally, accidentally, due to insufficient case clearance near the button, etc.) or due to the batteries running down.

For example, I have one Bluetooth device that destroys its old key and generates a new one if you hit the pairing button (this is normal), and fails to restore it if you cancel pairing by power-cycling the device (this is annoying). I solved this little accident waiting to happen with a piece of tape and a penny on the bottom of the unit.... :-)

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Spitfirem1]

I think the big factors are the perceived lack of responsiveness for the gaming crowd and the lack of value it provides to most business-class desktop users. Speaking from experience, I would be vary cautious were I to decide to purchase another bluetooth mouse. I personally found Bluetooth to be far more trouble than it was worth. On the gaming side of things, the small but perceptible lag I experienced coupled with the connection dropping at inopportune times and requiring the pairing process to be completed again put a damper on things. For business applications it was less frustrating, but in that realm the added convenience doesn't seem to offset the increased price and support cost with the exception of mobile users. When 90% of calls regarding user input devices coming in to a help desk concern problems with wireless keyboards/mice, they quickly go away for most users. The Logitech Bluetooth mouse I was using was the top of the line offering at the time I purchased it. I picked up a comparatively inexpensive corded USB mouse and continue to enjoy using it years later, and haven't missed the cordless convenience one bit.

Re:Why are Bluetooth mouses so rare?

[Amouth]

i will admit the MS stack worked perfect for the limited profiles it supports - but i've never had problems with the Toshiba stack one both integrated and add on BT adapters. Makes me wonder if it was a version issue.. cause they have gone through 3-4 version in under 2 years each with major advancements in usability

Dupe

[Areyoukiddingme]

Can we at least not get dupes from yesterday?? Wait a week first, jeeze.

Ah more Bluetooth devices!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can just see it! People talking to themselves when they have no phone! They'll be talking to their wristwatch and listening to it. Talking to their PDA.

I think the crazy people are the ones who will not be talking.

Oh my God! This crazy guy is talking to ME! POLICE! HELP! POLICE!

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

[Hatta]

How glorious have they ever sounded? I think the word you're looking for is "cheesy".

Re:Trans-Siberian Orchestra

[Misanthrope]

That sort of cheese seems to appeal to the Russian soul.
Case in point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oavMtUWDBTM

Who actually uses BT?

[aztektum]

Other than seeing a couple of people each day, around talking to themselves, er, into their BT headset, I know of know one that actually uses BT else.

It would be noice if printers/scanners/etc used it, but otherwise, I've never really found a point to BT.

Re:Who actually uses BT?

[MBCook]

Printers can, but it's uncommon. Trying to print any kind of photo would take forever. Scanners would be much too high bandwidth, and would make much more sense with WiFi.

I'm a little surprised to find out about BT 4. I've never heard of BT 3. The best I knew of was 2+EDR, which Apple has been using.

That said, BT mice work very well. I know the headsets are popular (which I despise since almost no one is considerate when using them). I have a great little mouse (a RadTech BT500) that I use with my laptop, and I also have a Bluetooth Wacom tablet.

But BT generally works. At my company, we have a conference room that used to have a Mac Mini in it. We used a wireless Apple keyboard and mouse for 2 + years without issue, both were Bluetooth. When we moved offices, they upgrade the Mini (which was an 4-5 year old PPC) to a Windows box, and bought a new wireless keyboard and mouse, which dropped all the time. They replaced that combo with another, and another. None of them worked well. Some had ultra short range (like 6 feet), others would drop all the time, it was a mess. But we kept returning then and buying new ones because those little custom wireless gizmos don't pay licensing fees and consequently don't cost much.

Eventually the executives got annoyed enough that they were willing to pay for something good. We bought a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse combo that has worked perfectly ever since. It used Bluetooth.

I've heard of some good wireless mice that don't use BT, but most wireless stuff seems to count the interface as one more place to cut costs.

I wonder what would happen if the group that licenses Bluetooth would cut the cost on devices and only charge on the host chipsets. That extra $0.50 (or whatever) seems to keep the Bluetooth market smaller than it should be.

Re:Who actually uses BT?

[shutdown -p now]

I almost always tether via Bluetooth, for one.

Also, Bluetooth wireless netbook mice are nice - no need to take up one USB slot (not like those things have many) for a receiver.

Re:Who actually uses BT?

[TigerTime]

PS3 is bluetooth. And after using the Sony BlueRay remote with it, I beg for the day that all TVs, Cable Boxes, and receivers are bluetooth. No pointing, hoping that the IR picked up your signal. Wherever you are. How ever you hold the remote. Your clicks count.

I'm shocked that those $100 Logitech remote controls don't have bluetooth built in. And i'm shocked that the $2000 TVs don't come with Bluetooth remotes that also have IR as a fallback option. All high end electronics should have Bluetooth as an option for their remotes.

Re:Who actually uses BT?

[peppepz]

I always use Bluetooth to sync my phone with my PC. Whenever my phone enters the PC's range, it automatically syncs media and PIM data in the background with no intervention from me. I can also send text messages and receive phone calls using the PC - not that I use this feature very much, but it'd be nice if I was a heavy SMS user.

Re:Who actually uses BT?

[peppepz]

Printers can, but it's uncommon. Trying to print any kind of photo would take forever.

Why, Bluetooth 2.0 transfers a 3 MP picture in 7 seconds, I guess the average desktop printer would take more time to print it.

In the fourth quarter perhaps?

[Threni]

You know, like it said in the last article about this, yesterday?

BT V3?

[WidgetGuy]

Version 3 Bluetooth? All of my bluetooth devices (stereo headphones/Sony, mobile phone headset/Motorola, BT transceiver/IOGear) are all 2.something. I don't think I've ever seen any actual products labeled as BT 3.

But, then, I don't get out as much as I used to...

What are...

[ironjaw33]

Bluetooth cats?

The other...

[DrYak]

If I go to the Logitech website & check out wireless mouses I see 12 wireless of which 2 are Bluetooth.

And the other 12 are very lickely to be "Wireless USB." Which was supposed to be integrated into Bluetooth 3.0 as an alternate PHY. But only Wifi made it through.

The reasons that Bluetooth wasn't popular are :
- drivers problems as mentionned by others (no support in Windows before XP SP2)
- paring complexity : BT2 abd BT3 introduced dead simple pairing (specially thanks to the RFID key exchange). Before that you would need to type PINs, etc.
- crowded frenquency : 2.4Ghz, just like Wifi, and it took BT1.2 before the thing got capable to actively avoid disturbing WiFi and vice-versa.

On the other hand, Bluetooth is incredibly popular with phones :
- Unlike a mouse, it's easy to enter a PIN to pair a phone.
- No wifi until recently so no disturbance.
- Everywhere in the world, except the USA, where the phone are sold non-cripled, Bluetooth is JUST WONDERFUL for quickly exchanging files, data, photos, ringtones, contacts information, music MP3.
think like "Zune squirting" but without the bloody idiotic DRM limitations.
- Everywhere in the world, except the USA, where the phone are sold non-cripled, Bluetooth is ALSO WONDERFUL for tethering.
- Also, the one true standard for wireless headsets.
- Also, useful for in-car handsfree without even needing to get the phone out of the pocket/the bag.
etc.

So maybe you don't find a ginormous choice of bluetooth powered mice, but on the other hand it's hard to find someone who hasn't at least used the phone's bluetooth a couple of time (most of the time, to send ringtones).

Generally, BlueTooth labelling sucks

[weston]

Because you often have no idea what profiles a given multipurpose bluetooth device supports from looking at its manufacturer specs or packaging.

Particularly phones.

No BIOS issues with Logitech MX 5500 BT Keyboard

[cyclocommuter]

I am using Logitech Bluetooth MX 5500 Keyboard and mouse combo on two computers (1 Vista and 1 Windows 7). No problems even when editing the BIOS. The mouse and/or keyboard also wakes up the PCs just fine. The MX 5500 does come with its own USB to Bluetooth adapter.