Works For Me: Bluetooth Headset and T61 with Windows XP

Okay, here's the follow up to "Blackeye for Bluetooth" and I'm pleased to say that the solution is really pretty simple for a Lenovo T61 running Windows XP, so simple that I think my computer was screwed up by the dear IT folks handling it after it left Lenovo but before it got to me -- you just have to kill Windows XP and go back to the drivers Lenovo provides that are in no way, shape or form to be confused with what Microsoft wants you to download from Windows Update. (Really, the abject lack of functionality in the latest drivers from Windows Update makes me wonder if the corporation known as Microsoft really just hates you, hates your computer and generally hates the Internet for making it so commonplace to crack and exploit computers running Windows.)

But here's what works:

1. Rename the bth.inf file already on your machine to something completely different. Microsoft provides the documentation on how to do this. Frankly, I'd almost rather see some accountability for who thought this would be a good feature in the first place.
2. Download and run Lenovo's 96 megabyte driver package for Bluetooth. (Note that that's the Windows XP version.) Running this will unzip it to a location on your hard drive -- drivers\TPBTooth by default -- and you'll need to run it on your own.
3. Run the unzipped thingy now and plan to reboot. After a successful install, Explorer had cratered so I had to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete as the quick way to a "reboot now" prompt.
4. After you reboot, the bth.inf file shouldn't force itself on your system (yay!) and the Lenovo-packaged drivers should go through a couple of minutes configuring themselves to provide functional services (like "audio") to the rest of your computer. You can tell that this works because you'll have "My Bluetooth Places" as an icon on your desktop and in your "My Computer" -- but don't bother clicking on it until it's sauntered on through and configured all of the services that it thinks you may want Bluetooth for.
5. Now you should be able to add your device in a nice step-by-step kind of way. But don't just add the device -- be sure to click into the device configuration to select the service you'll be getting from the device (which will come up blank momentarily while your PC interrogates the device to make sure it knows what its about).

And that's it, now you're ready to go.

So now that I've had the Jabra BT185z or whatever it is for half a day, I can say that thus far the sound quality is a bit disappointing. Longer talk-time isn't a feature if the reception is underpowered making it so that everything has to be said twice to be understood. I'm hoping my opinion of the device improves (as "charge over USB" is a great feature), but, well, we're going to have to reach a decision as to how acceptable it is or isn't before Monday. Also worth noting -- the process to get it to decouple from one device so that it's willing to pair up with another is rather tricky, to say the least. So far, I've found that you have to force a disconnection from anything that it was last joined to then flatly reject a reconnection and only then will the Jabra figure out that its previous pairing doesn't love it anymore. Not the most friendly of usage models, but so long as its consistent in that behavior, I can work with it.