Bluetooth/Ventrillo/Headsets

Quintile

The situation: My iMac is in my bedroom, my TV and consoles are in the living room (like... less than 20ft away). I want to be able to talk on vent from the living room, while keeping my computer where it is. There are two options that I've figured out. Buy a 25ft extension cord for the speaker/microphone plugs that my headset uses and run it through the wall, or purchase a bluetooth headset.

My question is about the bluetooth option. I really know nothing when it comes to bluetooth devices, so my questions are...

If I just bought some random bluetooth headset (for use cellphones, or a PS3, or whatever), would I be able have my iMac detect it and then use it with Vent?

Will it function perfectly (clear sound) from one room away (through dry wall)?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then I'll just run out and buy a decently priced bluetooth headset and I will be happy!

darkgrue

Bluetooth has pretyt limited power - performance is really going to vary based on the antennas on the headset (generally, they're crappy), and your Bluetooth reciever (generally, also crappy).

As soon as you throw in a wall, you're going to attenuate the signal to the hairy edge.

I've got a Motorola HT820 I got off of eBay for really cheap that I use for Vent. It'd work fine as long as I was within sight of my laptop within the room, out to 15 feet or so. As soon as I went into the next room, it would almost always cut out.

I wouldn't bet on any other combination being any more reliable than that. If you do buy one to try it out, make sure you can return it.

Tamin

I have a similar setup, only with a desktop. I picked up a Motorola S805 headset a few weeks ago now, and my general experience is as follows:
1) I can usually go into the next room without loss of signal, but sometimes the signal won't make it to the kitchen (line of sight from computer) easily. It also tends to cut out a little, even when sitting right next to the computer.

2) I haven't used the microphone function on vent yet, mostly because games (TF2) won't let me have both active simultaenously. Also, TF2 tends to break the audio connection until I fiddle the audio options after a map change. This did *not* happen earlier, when I had Pandora open in Firefox.

3) The little I have used the microphone, it didn't have many issues, but I also didn't walk away from the computer.

Mostly, I blame the adapter I'm using; it was cheap and I suspect bandwidth issues.

In more direct response: yes, any old headset should work. I was using some made-for-cellphone headset before I got my current pair, and it was .. service-able, if not terribly great.