Gizmo

By Andy Walker, Cyberwalker Media Syndicate

One problem with being wired is, well, the wires.

If you're constant suffering from tangles and knots in the cables that connect your gadgets then you'll be delighted to hear of Bluetooth.

It's a new wire-replacement technology, named after a Danish king who united Denmark, that is making a debut in all kinds of devices this fall.

One of the first products that uses Bluetooth is the Ericsson Bluetooth headset, a lightweight boom microphone/earpiece that hooks on to your ear.

There are two Bluetooth chips in the system. One is in the headset and one in a snap-on module that attaches to the phone. They communicate with each other using the same radio frequency as 2.4 GHz cordless phones and some baby monitors.
This means that you can put the phone in your pocket and use the headset to make a call. The phone must have voice-enabled dialing to do this, as did the Ericsson T28 World phone used to test the product.

You simply push a button on the earpiece speak a name at the tone and the headset tells the phone to dial. When you're done you push the same button to hang up.
The initial set up of the device takes some fiddling thanks to some non-intuitive menus on the phone, but once it's working it's a delight.

The headset could use a higher maximum volume at times, but overall this is a very useful device that will wow gadget lovers.

As more Bluetooth products rollout this fall, this technology will emable all kinds of devices to communicate with each other. That means it will be easy to share data and Internet connections between computer components, cellular phones and handheld computers.

Price: $310 Cdn / $199 US
More info: http://www.ericsson.com/US-CA/
Buy it: In Canada through Ericsson.com (end of August) and via www.iGo.com (now) or call iGo.com at 1-888-205-0064. In the U.S., it is also available at at BestBuy and Circuit City.