The Threadless Nut

This morning on the way to work, a black Jeep eases past me as I’m turning off to the bridge. There’s a kid in the back and he points, smiles and is yelling to his Dad, “Daddy, Daddy, a motorcycle!” I wave back to him and he laughs and starts telling his Dad about it more. How cool is that?

Anything you can do to brighten a kid’s day is great in my book. Sure, there are a lot of things I could have been on that would elicit a similar reaction, like a fire truck or a Ferrari, but I can’t afford either of those or they get much worse mileage than the bike. Actually, it’s both, but I don’t think any kid has ever shouted “Mommy! Look, an Accord, a grey one!”

A while ago we took the plunge, canceled our land line phone and switched to cell phones as our primary lines. While this has been a significant cost savings for us, there was one significant downside. You only get 1 phone. With a normal phone line you can scatter phones willy nilly about your evirons. One in the kitchen, one in the living room, one in the office, a couple in the bedroom, and, if you’re rich, one in each bathroom. Going to a cell phone means you only have the one, which you can carry around, but set it down and you do the inevitable race for the phone, if you were close enough to hear it playing your Rockford Files ringtone.

Enter the Xlink-BT.

This little gem wires into your existing phone system. You can either hook it up to the wiring, or just plug a multi-handset cordless phone into it, which is what we did. It then connects to your phone via bluetooth, just like your Borg headset. Just like that, you can use your home phones with your cell. It can connect to 3 cell phones at once, and each gets a distinctive ring, so you know whose phone it is. Once paired with your cell, it will automatically bond when you get in range. The cell phone handset is still enabled when it’s connected to the Xlink, so it won’t steal your calls like the headsets do.

I did have a few issues initially getting things working, but I downloaded new firmware from the Xlink site and updated the device and everything cleared up. The firmware application is Windows based, but it worked fine in a VMware image. As hard as it is to resist hooking up everything right away, I’d recommend getting the latest firmware first thing.

This is really a wonderful little piece of kit. It never causes any problems and just works transparently. You can leave your cell plugged into the charger and never have to worry about running out the door with a depleted battery and never have to go looking for the cell when a call comes in.

There is one complaint I can make. The name portion of the caller id is lost somewhere in the chain. So on your house phone you’ll see the proper number that is calling, but the name will always be “Xlink-BT”. It really is only a minor annoyance though, and I imagine there’s a good reason why they can’t make it work.