Thanks to Plantronics my life has gotten a lot easier as of late. I have so many wireless headsets connected to my phone it is just unreal. The headsets are connected serially making the whole contraption a bit of a mess. I just haven’t had a chance to do anything with the headsets after I review them and manufacturers generally don’t want them back so they just stay on my desk and the scene is like a giant headset graveyard. The situation with my computer is also messy as I have myriad wires connecting my phone to the inputs of my sound card so I can record interviews. In short I probably have as many audio and headset cables as Bill Gates has cables in his home entertainment system. Of course his are probably all made out of a titanium platinum alloy coated with diamonds but you get the point.

So making VoIP calls from my computer gets to be a pain because I haven’t connected a switching system to allow me to use a wired VoIP headset and if I want to disconnect the cables from my phone to the computer so I can plug in a headset, I have issues. What issues? Getting a flashlight, digging under my desk and finding the computer and assembling it all back together when I am done. Also, my USB headset is always at home. When I remember I bring it in to conduct VoIP calls via softphone. But In reality I use the laptop for my VoIP calls so the USB headset rarely comes to Technology Plaza.

Recently though I needed to have a VoIP conversation and my laptop didn’t have the ability to punch through the firewall with UDP packets so I had to use my PC. Thankfully Plantronics sent me a Voyager 510-USB Bluetooth headset which I had been meaning to try for quite some time.

I had a bluetooth adapter on my computer which I tried to connect to the headset but it just didn’t work for whatever reason. I then realized I never use the bluetooth adapter for anything so I disconnected it and plugged in the Plantronics adapter that came with the headset. I then installed the CD that came with the headset and voila everything was connected. A few moments later I was VoIPing away like a champ and the beautiful thing is I can now use the same headset with my mobile phone.

My daily headset is a Plantronics Voyager 510S and I have beat this thing up something fierce. It has been dropped, twisted by my kids, thrown and who knows what else. It has taken the beating and always kept working. Occasionally the headset is out of sync with my Verizon XV-6700 but a simple reboot of the Microsoft-based OS device brings them back into sync. So I am looking forward to using the upgraded headset and who knows? The consolidation of the VoIP and mobile headset on my desk may start a trend in my life where I start to get rid of the older headsets I hardly use anymore.

So while you may think it is odd to couple a single bluetooth device with a mobile phone and computer I am hoping this Odd Couple will lead me to become more like Felix Unger and less like Oscar Madison.

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