bluetooth printing

From what I know bluetooth is a wireless connection. The customer would need some type of Bluetooth device in the PC.

If they are running XP, the user would have to install the software for Bluetooth and then let XP find the device. I do not know if there is software from Ricoh for our Bluetooth card.

Making it print would be just like any other, select print, and go.

Can anyone else clarify and add?

Thanx

Bluetooth is a standard developed by a group of electronics manufacturers that allows any sort of electronic equipment -- from computers to keyboards and headphones -- to make its own connections, without wires, cables or any direct action from a user. Bluetooth is intended to be a standard that works at two levels:
· It provides agreement at the physical level -- Bluetooth is a radio frequency standard.
· It also provides agreement at the next level up, where products have to agree on when bits are sent, how many will be sent at a time and how the parties in a conversation can be sure that the message received is the same as the message sent.

I understood it was a wireless connection. The card came with no software. Doesn't seem to be anything in the manuals about configuring it. And installing it on the copier was just plug it in and go.

I am certainly not as network savvy as some of the IT gods on this site, but here is something else that you may want to consider (and IT gods, please correct me if I have been misinformed):

I am told that wireless networks are considerably slower than standard ethernet connections (as slow as 11 mbps, I'm told). As a salesman, I have always shyed away from adding any wireless interface because the clients perception is going to be that my MFP is slow and not their network (and a color MFP is going to make this even worse due to the larger file sizes).

If your client currently has no network at all, you may find it easier to sell them an inexpensive hub and simply create a small network for them eliminating all of the wireless issues that you will probably have to deal with (and it would probably be cheaper than the $300+ they paid for the Bluetooth Interface).

Just a thought and like I said...please correct me if I'm wrong!

Wireless is indeed slower than a cable connection ... 802.11a up to 54Mbps, 802.11b up to 11Mbps, 802.11b+ up to 22 Mbps, 802.11g which will accept a, b, & b+ formats. But unless you are transferring REALLY REALLY BIG stuff between the wireless devices, speed should not be noticeable (or if your wireless printer or other device is located quite a distance from the wireless access point as the speed reduces the further the distance) ... remember, those are megabits (8 bits to a byte ... not a gurantee) per second. Typical print jobs aren't that large. In most cases, if the end user wants to add a device to a location that is not wired for the network, it would be more economical for them to add a few wireless appliances to the network than to have wiring installed. Not to mention the convenience of relocating the device without losing network connections or rewiring again. (Then again, I haven't studied up on blue tooth so perhaps that doesn't even apply to my above rambling.)
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Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (802.11) are both wireless networking standards that provide connectivity via radio waves. The main difference: Bluetooth's primary use is to replace cables, while Wi-Fi is largely used to provide wireless, high-speed access to the Internet or a local area network.

Bluetooth
First developed in 1994, Bluetooth is a low-power, short-range (30 feet) networking specification with moderately fast transmission speeds of 800 kilobits per second. Bluetooth provides a wireless, point-to-point, "personal area network" for PDAs, notebooks, printers, mobile phones, audio components, and other devices. The wireless technology can be used anywhere you have two or more devices that are Bluetooth enabled. For example, you could send files from a notebook to a printer without having to physically connect the two devices with a cable.
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Wi-Fi
Short for Wireless Fidelity, Wi-Fi is a user-friendly name for devices that have been certified by the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance to conform to the industry-standard wireless networking specification IEEE 802.11. Wi-Fi began appearing in products in late 1998. The standard currently provides access to Ethernet networks such as a corporate LAN or the Internet at super-fast speeds of up to 54 megabits per second.

Wi-Fi connections can be made up to about 300 feet away from a "hot spot" (slang for a Wi-Fi networking node). When your notebook or PDA has a Wi-Fi networking card or built-in chip, you can surf the Internet at broadband speeds wirelessly.
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(Bluetooth and WiFi comparison shamelessly for the most part plagarized from http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,103848,00.asp)