tony spencer

After 38 years of computer life, I have never been pissed enough about a product to post a review until now. Yesterday (12 August 2005) I had the misfurtune of purchasing a Kensington USB Bluetooth adaptor. After opening the package, I discovered that the drivers were not in the WinXP cache and had they had no Microsoft signature. It took me 7 tries that resulted in hangups before the application even loaded. There were also WinXP SP2 issues identified. There is no support offered on the Kinsington www site, at all. The software is 3rd party, published in 2003 and not supported by the company, as they have merged with another that offers no support either The dogma stated that the unit is USB 2.2; it was not found until I put it in a USB 1.1 port. I have finally got my PDA to sync via Bluetooth but I can get no additional application to configure. I will be de-installing this little monster, returning it to the vendor for a refund and willpoint myself in the direction of a unit that has is properly supported by its manufacturer. DO NOT EVEN CONSISDER THIS PRODUCT!!!

this things sucks my ass so hard!! no drivers if you loose the cd. fuck this piece.

After two days of struggling with this device, I came across your site. Unfortunately, I still owned one of these devices, and because it was a christmas present, returning it wasn’t an option. I’ve actually been able to successfully make it work. I’ve blogged about it. Basically, remove the Kensington drivers and install the MSI driver only (not the bluetooth stack). Use Microsoft’s stack. It’s been working for several hours very successfully now.

Ian – thank god you blogged about it cuz i followed your directions and links and only installed the device driver not the MSI WMI bluetooth drivers and it works like a charm. Used it this morning driving to work and it was great talking to my GPS. Thanks. Paul

hey i got the kensington bluetooth usb adapter model #33085 and saw that you guys needed drivers well i just got this and have the driver cd. if you want i can send anyone an iso of it so they can burn.
just email me at bob92553@yahoo.com and have the subject bluetooth adapter
later

The MSI driver works magic, I have been working with it without problems, thanks for the tip

I tried the MS driver – BTDongle.inf and XP doesn’t recognise it as having any info for the 33085, how exatly did you guys get it to work???

this is where i uploaded the driver cd
http://members.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=593685
user name is drivers
password is all

Wow, I have never bought a crapier product then this kensington bluetooth dongle. I mean everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The installation was troublesome, I couldn’t adjust the volume for my headset from the control panel, it couldn’t detect the adapter in the usb port. It is overall, a piece of junk. If you can’t return it, you might as well just melt it down and sell it as a plastic pellet to recycling companies.

i also have the bluetooth adapter but no CD….they have drivers available at the following site…im downloading it rite now…hopefully it works…leme know if it works for u guyz

ftp://ftp.kensington.com/bt

I installed the MSI drivers as per the blog, but nothing else (ie the SP2 BT stack) installed afterwards. So I have a crappy little 30385 that gets detected wonderfully, I can pair it with my headset, but there is no audio gateway or any service to use. I’ve sent the request for help into kensington, we’ll see what happens. By the sound of it – not much will happen. All I want to do is use a BT headset, and be able to change the gain. Sounds like some of you have accomplished that. My situation right now:
- MSI drivers installed.
- My device is detected when I insert it
- I can paor the headset
- there is no audio gateway, network or any other service.

Any ideas?

Nothing from Kensington works right.

I tried installing hard the Kensington Bluetooth adapter model 33085 but I kept getting the license errors. I wish if Kensington could have included the license with the software itself.

I am getting the license error BS too even though I am installing from the CD thaat came with the dongle. Did you find a solution Tom?

I bought the Kensington 33348 model. It comes with the xp software for it, is fast, and connects up to 7 devices. It works great with my Razr phone and my iPAQ PDA. Good buy, I recommend it.

I found this ftp by calling india yayaya

ftp://ftp.kensington.com/bt/

if you cant login this will get you there!!!

http://tinyurl.com/7746p

ENJOY!!!

I just bought one of these a few hours ago (33085) driver installation was a little buggy (error dialogs re: needing files from windows CD that I ignored.) But other than that it worked with my new Motorola RAZR phone that I also just got.
Already wirelessly transfered an MP3 to my phone.
Rather painless. I’m using the latest version of Windows Media Center. Not sure why everyone else is having so much trouble. I paid $59.99 CAD at best buy. Sounds like a rip off though. I think I’ll return it and look for a better reviewed product to replace it with. Suggestions?

I’ve have the Kensington USB 2.0 (model 33348)for a couple months. The CD has the WIDCOMM 4.1.0.2400 drivers exactly as given at the FTP site above.

All worked well, but I don’t use the dongle that often.

Today I tried it after a month of inactivity, and it no longer works. Uninstalling and re-installing the drivers didn’t help from the original CDROM, and some guy in India with Kensington is sending me a new dongle, but I don’t think it is the hardware (I could at least get it to light up with the MSI stack).

My theory is that some Microsoft auto-update over the last couple months killed the Kensington driver and Kensignton doesn’t know what’s going on.

Tom L.

download the drivers at my site:

http://allthingstech.blogspot.com/2006/04/kensington-bluetooth-adapter-k33085.html

I wasted too much time looking for the drivers to install on my laptop.

i won’t buy kensington again because of this. you can’t download the driver from their site. what kind of support is that? you can’t even find the device on their list and they don’t list canada as an option under countries. if the driver works from your site mythbuster then thank you very much. i’m going to go there now.

Mine worked until my computer crashed now i can not get it to reload.

I have to add to this list of unhappy users. Where are the drivers on the Kensignton site? I found the FTP site from another posting but the driver locked up the PC. Not impressed. Time to head for the garbage can. Dont waste your money or time on this hardware. The software isnt there.

Canada is a country?

I’ve had this kensington bluetooth adapter for quite a while now… Actually a couple years for my v600 and now my e815… I’ve never had a problem until now as I plugged it into my XP box rather than my Macs… I’ve used it on a powermac, iMac G5 and a couple different powerbooks with never a problem and never even loaded any drivers… plugged it in and accessed by phone and synced them… Hopefully some of these posts with help as I only need to hack my e815.. Kensington seems to be a company that designs for mac and then ports to windows as an afterthought… most companies do the reverse..

i have tried everything…i FINALLY have bluetooth places/devices again but i try to do anything with it and the damn thing isn’t found. i think its totally fried….what a waste of money. piece of cr@p.

I downloaded the msi and unziped it but don’t know how to make it go where it is supposed to go from there

does anyone know some good software to actually use my bluetooth device (33348) to transfer the pictures from my phone to my PC? the kensington software said that my phone does not support their file transfer service. i have a motorola E815.

I bought Kensington USB Bluetooth Adapter. While installing the CD, I got a message on the screen.It says ”please insert the CD 1”. I looked at the box to see if there is any other cd )) Ofcourse, There is no any other CD. I search the net, there is no softare to install it. Finally, I ended up on this site.
Thanks to Mythbuster. The software on his/her site at least downloads fully but didn’t work on my laptop either.It’s trying so hard to crash and not recognize the device.
I’m a patience person but enough is enough. I hope I don’t break the “CD 1″ and throw the damn device to the garbage until the store opens again this morning.It is already 2am.I’ve been with the device more than 4 hours. Don’t waste your time to figure out what to do with the Kensington product. Return it while you can.

For the Dongle part No. 33348 this is the driver…

ftp://ftp.kensington.com/bt/KensingtonBTW%204.0.1.2400.zip