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Jabra: we know our Bluetooth headsets don’t work with laptops

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141–150 of 171 posts

Re: Jabra: we know our Bluetooth headsets don’t work with laptops

#141
post #33

I know people love the wireless thing. But if you want some nice over ear cans, and dont mind a wire. Sennheiser HD 280 i think , should be around 100 bucks. Not sure who Jabra is but if it's some kind of fancy startup making headphones. No thanks. I will stick to people who do actual audio work to make my headphones please.

Jabra has been a leading manufacturer of ear pieces since they became a thing in the dumbphone era. Not a startup.

And to add to that many of their telephony products are best in class. I sometimes regret that my biz-2400 has a wire on it, but it has the best noise cancellation of any headset I have ever used and is a pleasure to use all day. Not a shill, but I use their headsets for hours a day and my experiences with their wired products are overwhelmingly positive. I think this is a shoddy BT implementation.

Re: Jabra: we know our Bluetooth headsets don’t work with laptops

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>His last advice is for me to get a "combo" router/modem from Comcast, instead of my leased modem and third-party (new) router. Bad idea. However, you shouldn't be leasing a modem. Buy them outright. Breaks even in a few months.

I need to replace my Charter modem about once a year... does that hold true even in that case? This has been true for at least the last 5 years running.

Even with the latest DOCSIS modems, Comcast has been deprecating 2 channel and 4 channel modems in favor of 8 and 16 channel devices.

Were you buying the cheapest supported modem? Your modem was probably deprecated when you bought it.

Also, at least for Comcast, the fact that they don't support your modem doesn't mean it won't work. It just means they won't be pushing updates and if you call in with a problem they'll tell you to first replace the modem.

Re: Jabra: we know our Bluetooth headsets don’t work with laptops

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in the B2B space. One thing I've noticed is that if Enterprises aren't happy with the product they signed up for or the product doesn't deliver as promised they will refuse to pay (The ultimate motivator). I feel like in the customer space you have less leverage and it's more of a headache to simply not pay or get a refund (in this case).

It's surprising to me how much power enterprises have over every aspect of a business relationship. Our company was acquired by a Large Consultancy. The first thing they did was tell our (corporate) landlord, "We pay everything 90 days late, and we will not pay late fees. Period." And that was that. Anyone else trying to violate the terms of a contract would be told where to go but the landlord swallowed it without a…

Where is this business located? Our city has a real estate boom going on. The landlord night honor the lease rather than incur the cost of fighting it but would be unlikely to renew with that attitude.

Then again evicting a person is hard enough. I have no idea how hard it is to evict a company.

Re: Jabra: we know our Bluetooth headsets don’t work with laptops

#144

I've never known Bluetooth to not produce a miserable experience at some time or another. It's inconsistently bad in some cases too. I hate setting up bluetooth on my car the most, I need to "Talk" to my car, and I can't just do it while stopped at a red light, I have to shut off my car and do it before I go. I still havent redone it since I upgraded phones last year... I just plug into the aux port while driving .

The vast majority of devices are indeed bad. I am convinced that most manufacturers do not know how to handle very basic issues of connectivity and pairing. The BT standards and all of the BT chips available are capable of making very seamless pairing and re-connection flows, it's just the device manufacturers who don't use them correctly to do it. There is a company called TeckNet that makes a BT mouse that is full-…

It might also be the choice of how they choose to integrate it.

In some Nissan cars the Bluetooth is a canbus device that you have to pair through weird gyrations on the steering wheel unless you have a Satnav unit. I mean it works fine in my experience but it's weird as hell.

My guess is that they're buying canbus modules from some supplier like Bosch and just slapping them on the canbus so they can check a box on the spec sheet.

Re: Jabra: we know our Bluetooth headsets don’t work with laptops

#145
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice, it's far less effective than what most Americans enjoy. Return policies are usually abysmal in most of Europe, to begin with, and long term support is only technically better because of more regulations on warranties. In practice, American firms are far more lenient with their policies and credit cards alone provide more protections than most all of the EU regulations seek to implement.

This is just anecdotal nonsense, what factual sources do you have for this as it is completely contrary to my experience.

It is definitely anecdotal. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I'll try to find some relevant data, though I'm not sure how easy that will be. Slightly more helpful are maybe looking up policies for most credit cards, which now let you return virtually any item within 90 days for any reason, extend warranties to a total of 2-4 years, cover accidental damage to items including breakage and theft for 90 days after purchase, and offer historical price matching for 60-90 days or sometimes even longer. These policies are extremely difficult to come by where I live (not in the US), and I've had a far more difficult time returning items that really should be returnable (dry pasta or something very shelf-stable) than I did in the States.

I did find this snippet, which at least indicates that Americans more often take advantage of return policies. However, I understand that this doesn't directly discuss the differences in policies:

"In the US, an estimated 8–10% of in-store sales is returned whereas online sales may result in 25–40% returns. [...] In Asia and Europe, less than 5 percent of purchases are returned." https://psmag.com/magazine/underwear-of-uncertain-origin

More anecdotes in that article, and countless other anecdotes are trivial to find online:

> U.S. retailers pride themselves on their generous return policies. At Costco, I can buy a barbecue grill, cook on it all summer, then return it in the fall for a full refund. (Which is not to say that I would.) Or take the proverbial television bought for Super Bowl Sunday, then returned. The days leading up to professional football’s championship game see a huge spike in TV sales. And just as reliably, the days after the game see a spike in TVs returned to the store.

Re: Jabra: we know our Bluetooth headsets don’t work with laptops

#146

I'm surprised. I have the exact same headset (Jabra Evolve 75) at work and have had no issues at all using it on my 2018 MacBook Pro. I use it daily for Slack and other VoIP calls as well as to listen to music. I usually have it paired to my phone as well, but it works just as well connected solely to the Mac. That said, I did have an issue once with it when trying to play a game on Steam. I couldn't hear the in-game…

Bluetooth uses different Profiles for the same functions but different purposes:

A2DP is for HiFi (ahahah) stereo audio uni directional.

HSP is for headsets, it supports "LAB" audio and headset controls (e.g. volume, answer/hangup).

HFP is for hands-free in cars and support "LAB" audio and overlaps HFP with controls.

AVRCP is for media controls which overlaps HSP (e.g. play/pause, skip/previous, volume)

So a problem with Bluetooth is that a device can support all of these profiles but usually not all at once. They have no built in Mux so can't take audio over A2DP and HSP and combine them. So the host must negotiate all of the Profiles and then decide which is the most appropriate to use since it can't do all at once.

I occasionally have a problem in my car where it establishes the A2DP connection and streams audio but not AVRCP so I can't control it.

On Windows 10, when you have a Headset connected that supports A2DP, HFP, HSP, and AVRCP things get interesting. If you're listening to music it will be streamed via A2DP to the headset, but if you get a VOIP call Windows switches to HSP to access the Mic but your headset can't Mux audio so it kills the A2DP connection. Windows will then helpfully stream your music either over HSP which sounds like ass or it will pump it out the laptop speakers. The solution I came up with is to disable HSP/HFP on Windows and route all audio capture to the build in Microphone instead of the Headset's.

Based on your description of playing Steam, I'm guessing MacOS is doing something similar. The headset can't Mux audio so it's dropping A2DP in favor of HSP audio, which would explain why you lose in-game audio but not VOIP.

I'll have to play around with my Mac and see how it handles this.

Re: Jabra: we know our Bluetooth headsets don’t work with laptops

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in the B2B space. One thing I've noticed is that if Enterprises aren't happy with the product they signed up for or the product doesn't deliver as promised they will refuse to pay (The ultimate motivator). I feel like in the customer space you have less leverage and it's more of a headache to simply not pay or get a refund (in this case).

It's surprising to me how much power enterprises have over every aspect of a business relationship. Our company was acquired by a Large Consultancy. The first thing they did was tell our (corporate) landlord, "We pay everything 90 days late, and we will not pay late fees. Period." And that was that. Anyone else trying to violate the terms of a contract would be told where to go but the landlord swallowed it without a…

That's not enterprise 'power' - that's leverage. The landlord could have told them to go kick rocks and your boss would have had to come up with a new offer or would have been scrambling to find a new office that optimized for your needs. This suggests that the market for office space in your city favors renters. Just wait and see what happens to your 'contract' when the market shifts!

Re: Jabra: we know our Bluetooth headsets don’t work with laptops

#148
post #12

I once made the mistake of buying Jabra wireless sports headphones. You know there will be a problem if you open the box and the first thing you see is a piece of paper and a phone holster, obviously thrown in at the last moment. The piece of paper says you have to use the phone holster to attach the phone to your right arm. Yes, your right arm, the closer to your right ear the better. The instructions were very spec…

Plantronics does the exact same thing with their Backbeat Fit line.

I can speak from experience here, I have had both Backbeat Fit 1 and 2 (I'm using the 2 right this moment) and they are very good. The range is decent, not huge, but you certainly _don't_ have to have the phone on a particular side of your body.

I can walk out of the room and still have audio, but also to be fair that's not really their use case.

Re: Jabra: we know our Bluetooth headsets don’t work with laptops

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plantronics does the exact same thing with their Backbeat Fit line.

I can speak from experience here, I have had both Backbeat Fit 1 and 2 (I'm using the 2 right this moment) and they are very good. The range is decent, not huge, but you certainly _don't_ have to have the phone on a particular side of your body. I can walk out of the room and still have audio, but also to be fair that's not really their use case.

I had the 2100, and the connection was spotty when I had my phone in my left pocket. Their proposed solution was to carry my phone on the right pocket. My accepted solution was to return the defective device.

Re: Jabra: we know our Bluetooth headsets don’t work with laptops

#150
post #17

"Wait, are you saying the headset can’t connect to a computer via native Bluetooth? And you knew it the whole time? While you asked me to try a different device, to update drivers, to install Jabra software, to meet with your technician… You were just trying to wear me down?!?" This encapsulates what is most wrong and abhorrent about US customer service. This methodology is employed by thousands of companies, it is i…

I work in the B2B space. One thing I've noticed is that if Enterprises aren't happy with the product they signed up for or the product doesn't deliver as promised they will refuse to pay (The ultimate motivator). I feel like in the customer space you have less leverage and it's more of a headache to simply not pay or get a refund (in this case).

If you've purchased something, you've already paid. If you want your money back, you have to do the legwork, and about the only option you have is to get a refund from the place where you bought it.
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