Thanks for your response. Its always good to see you’re not the only one suffering!

To be honest I’ve not been too unhappy with the service from HP, because although some of their products may be fragile or badly designed (like the Headphones), they usually sort you out with a new or refurb if you persist – so long as you’re still under warranty.

Obviously it differs for people in different circumstances, but I’ve always said its worth staying on hold for a while to get a new pair of Headphones!

When my earphone jack went on my rx3715, HP actually replaced the whole motherboard fixing the problem, and when my iPaq screen went I convinced them to replace my iPaq with a refurb (which also had a 3 month extra warranty). You just have to be very confident over the phone and you will be able to convince them.

As for BT headset, unfortunately there is no Audio Gateway on the rx3715 so you will not be able to get your handsfree kits to work. On top of that, Skype is such a heavy application that it isn’t able to handle bluetooth connections on top of the high quality audio transmission so it doesn’t work very well with headsets on PDA’s anyway.

Nice reviews, by the way, keep’em up!

ps: does anyone know if there’s a way of updating the bluetooth driver to get a bluetooth hands-free from nokia to work with an rx3715 in, say, Skype?

It’s funny, HP called me up after my last replacement in order to do a ‘customer satisfaction survey’. I was more then happy to say how dissatisfied I was with the service, to be fair I got what I was after but it took a few phone calls and scanning my receipt and emailing it to them. The worst thing is when you’re on the phone to someone who can barely even speak your language. I don’t blame the person who’s on the phone of course; I blame HP for trying to save money by having their call centres in places like India.

Forums can be really helpful; I mean what we would do without the internet eh…

Oh yeah, too bad about the HP printer software… free would have been nice I actually saw it when I downloaded the Bluetooth software so I downloaded it for the sake of having it, but I watch my memory so having Jetcet Print installed is plenty for me.

If any friends on my various forums need esoteric or hard-to-find pda software, you’re my new go-to guy. Thanks again Usayd. I’m taking another cue from you and surfing the Pocketnow website: more helpful stuff. You’re the man! *smile*

Geo

Thanks for the feedback; I’m sure that it will definitely be useful for someone using Bluetooth headphones with their laptops. I was going to try it out with my dad’s HP laptop but I never really got the chance, guess it’s probably not worth it anyway.

The Bluetake ones look nice but they are double the price of the HP ones (and that is a year later) at £67 they aren’t the cheapest available but with all the hassle that people have had with the HP ones, perhaps it is worth it (I don’t care, I’ve got two working pairs for £30!).

That printer thing sounds cool (I’ve got rid of the mobile printing software because I literally never used it apart from testing), you could have got it free but that wouldn’t have supported Bluetooth.

I’m glad that you found my site useful, if you have any other (rare) downloads that people might find useful/are hard to find then please let me know!

Thanks

Thank you for all the help. I realized late into the night that you had the software I needed on your website, which you refer to in your response to me. The only software I had been able to find was the HP Bluetooth headset (BT) fix from HP.com Software Update/Drivers web page. The Bluetooth PPC AV Setup was what I needed to add the headset option to my iPaq 3715.

After downloading the software from your site, it was a simple matter of installing it to the iPaq via Activesync, pairing the headphones, which I already knew how to do because I had done it with my notebook computer. Afterwards, I also installed the BT fix and my ears were rewarded with glorious, wireless sounds from my pda using both win media player and mort player.

However, for those reading this there are 2 important notes!

1) Installing the BT headset fix from HP.com will add the remote “Next” and “Previous” play capability when using Win Media Player, as long as your headphone supports that feature. Mine does and it’s great!

2) Very Important! I own an HP notebook, so when I installed the HP iPaq Bluetooth Headset AV software found here, it added this feature to my HP Bluetooth audio options on my computer. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but in some HP notebooks this causes the audio to lock in the Bluetooth mode and not release the audio even after the headphones have disconnected. There are references to this issue on HP’s website, as well as a download fix for my particular notebook, the Pavilion dv1300. I should mention however, that even after installing the fix, my audio remained connected to the Bluetooth profile, so I could only listen to music from my computer if I used my headphones or turned off the Bluetooth/Wireless service, which meant no simultaneous listening through my notebook speakers and wireless surfing. My solution was simple and lucky! I ran the Windows XP RESTORE feature, which thankfully had created an automatic Restore point when I installed the Bluetooth PPC AV software. So, don’t count on that automatic Restore point, create a manual Restore point BEFORE installing the Bluetooth AV setup.

Now, all is smooth and mellow. I’m listening to Thievery Corporation while typing this and hoping it will save someone else the mixed blessing of installing this great software Usayd has posted here for all to enjoy. Btw, I highly recommend the Bluetake mini headphones. They are much lighter and more comfortable than some of the banded headphones I have seen. Also, with the simple wire connection between earpads there is no chance of the band ‘cracking’ or breaking like some have mentioned. It takes a little less than 2 hours to fully charge using the USB charger (less if you buy the AC charger) and operates for me 6+ hours.

Also, I don’t know why HP does not have the Bluetooth AV mobile software update on their site since there are obviously still lots of people out there using Win Mobile 2003(SE), who use Bluetooth, but don’t have the headset option preinstalled. (Win Mobile 5 comes with BT Headset option preinstalled) The same is true of their Bluetooth printer support. My HP iPaq Bluetooth printer option only had a driver for HP printers. I purchased the Canon ip90 portable printer with Bluetooth capability which is significantly sleeker, smaller, and sharper than HP’s. So, to get my printer to work with my iPaq, I also purchased Westtek Jetcet Print Pocket software. It has all of the major Bluetooth capable printer drivers. And yes, it works great. It is mobile heaven, but more importantly, it is mobile wireless heaven.

Hope this helps all the geeky gadgeteers like me out there. I know Usayd’s website has helped me and added more functionality to my toys. So I bow to your foresight and generosity Usayd for collecting and keeping these utilities alive on the web.

Cheers,

Geo

Sounds like quite an experience, very unfortunate for you certainly as I’ve been lucky enough to have mine replaced twice without too much difficulty. I can see where your issue is, however it does kind of make sense in a weird sense but really HP should be providing you with a better service. I suggest writing a complaint letter documenting the issue – you should keep persisting and don’t just let them win, if you keep bugging them they might give you another pair just to shut you up. What you might find is that when you call again you’ll get someone else on the phone who will actually give you a different conclusion to the last person, perhaps in your favour.

Whilst you’re doing this, you can try fixing your headphones. I used black duct tape which works fine so far – however I never encountered any connection problems with the band as such. I do advise that you do not try and remove the band because it’s really impossible.

Thanks for sharing your experience!

I purchased my HP BT headphones for my iPaq four months ago, on a trip to Taiwan. From my first use I was fascinated with the unit, but after only a bit more than two months of use, it started interrupting itself, and it didn’t took long for it to stop working. After a while trying with the software I realized the problem was in the hardware, specifically in the band where I found a small crack, so every time I tried to put the headphones on, it ended up disconnecting itself.

So after realizing this problem, I called HP Support with intention of claiming the warranty, after several hours of interrogations, giving away serial and product numbers, addresses and even sending a fax with a copy of my proof of purchase, they ended up telling me that because I purchased my unit in Taiwan, I had to contact the HP Support in Taiwan so I could claim the warranty. I live in Florida, so that of course made me mad, but anyway after realizing this was my only option, I asked for the number I had to call, and so they told me that they only had support in the Chinese language, and because I don’t know the language, now I’m stuck with my damaged unit.

Now I’m trying to find a way to fix the unit by myself, or make them understand they’re mistake, at a time where every other mayor manufacturer has global support for they’re products. So if anyone can help on these, please let me know.

So you have Bluetake Light headphones (which look pretty neat) and you’re trying to get them to work on your rx3715 with some kind of Bluetooth hack/update. Well according to that site they can work with a PDA with an A2DP profile and that means that they really should work with the rx3715 with the A2DP profile installed.

What I can’t really understand is that you are saying you have the BT software yet you do not have the headphone option on your iPaq? If that is the case it means that you have not successfully installed the software. What should happen when you install the software is that another option comes up in the Bluetooth manager (it comes up as the first option) which says ‘High Quality Audio Setup’ (and a picture of headphones). If you go through to that then you’ll need to put your headphones into pairing mode in order for it to discover them (on the HP ones you old down the select key until the light flashes differently, you probably have instructions of how to do that). Then once it is discovered it should make you enter a passkey of 0000 and once that’s done your headphones should be paired and should work.

Please confirm whether this is your issue or if the software works but your headphones are not detected.