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

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

#81

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 .

I used to feel this way too. When BT came out I got so excited - saved up my pocket-hole-burning money from a retail job to buy the crappiest piece of crap I could find. Pairing failed. Audio quality sucked. Range was... barely wireless. Batteries drained in moments.

That was then. Recently my wife wanted a durable portable speaker, and got a JBL somethingorother. It works surprisingly well. So I got some JBL earbuds. They work pretty well. I got curious and went back over some old headphones. Turns out some of the problems seem to be in the stack and some in the devices - I ended up not using those old headphones, but some of the old problems did get fixed.

In summary: Things used to suck but my recent BT purchases have set me hopeful. I use the auxiliary port on my car still also - and I think I'll keep it that way for sharing. Pairing devices still makes me feel invaded.

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

#82
post #15

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 .

AirPods completely changed my view of BT devices. Before, I avoided BT completely because I could never get them working well with an Android phone I was using at that time. Headphones I was using would always disconnect after some time and the quality would drop intermittently and there was no way to fix it. The "fix" was to wait for the battery to drain and then the headphones would restart. I tried few different h…

That's because AirPods aren't plain Bluetooth and include some proprietary Apple magic. I have several Bluetooth audio devices and the only one that's reliable my Jawbone (remember them?) Jambox. Everything else has weird failure modes where it fails to connect or connects partially and allows me to control playback but the sound still comes out my phone.

Headphone jacks were fucking awesome. I want them back.

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

#83
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have three Bluetooth headsets (and all cheap, in the ~$100 range), use them with Android phones and Linux computers without any issue. The sound quality is par for the price but pairing, connecting, and disconnecting works just like with wired headphones.

Care to share which ones? I'm trying to find some headsets within that range. I'm not an audiophile, just need to hear, and block out just enough external noise.

I've had a pair of JLabs for awhile that have worked fine with my iPhone. I don't think they sell my model anymore, and last I looked, the current version apparently is not as good. But, reading Amazon comments they do seem to have good CS if you need to return or exchange what you get.

When these break, I'm getting AirPods though. I see them in use in the office and it's like magic the ease of pairing, etc...

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

#84

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…

I have a different Jabra headset (Elite 65t) which works fine on my Linux laptop. And the title of the OP's article is actually misleading - Jabra says they don't support the configuration, not that it "won't work." This is actually totally understandable to me, the bluetooth hardware/software ecosystem in PCs is esoteric and frustrating, and it makes sense that Jabra would provide a solution that bypasses it.

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

#85

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).

Can you imagine the prices and support you'd get if customer purchases were net-10? Buy something with your credit card and if it's garbage, you just tell your credit card to hold payment.

Assuming you don't have massive fraud issues, it wouldn't change anything.

When the product has a low price and many customers, then if the product works for most people. Things are fine :)

A Bluetooth headset that works with your phone works for most people.

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

#86

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 .

I have a little BT dongle thing that plugs into the aux port. It works fine for listening to music, but taking calls is still bad. My trucks BT is comical to take calls on. Seconds delay...

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

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not up to the customers to improve this state of affairs. It's entirely in the hands of the companies.

The customers can rally their elected officials to legislate guaranteed 1+ year warranties... this is what European customers did a while back.

That won't stop companies from giving customers the run around, therefore it won't obliviate the need to publicly shame companies to get issues resolved. It's not even clear what "1+ year warranty" would mean for many industries in which there isn't a physical good being sold.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for business regulation. I support mandatory warranties and the like. But it's not going to resolve the perceived social issue of customers shaming corporations for bad behavior, because companies will always find new bad behavior that skirts the law. Even if you have a legislature that's on top of the situation, there will still be a delay between when a company invents new bad behavior and when the legislature can create a new law against it.

If it's not clear, I disagree that this behavior is even an issue. People shaming companies isn't the problem; companies doing things worth shaming is the problem.

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

#88
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have three Bluetooth headsets (and all cheap, in the ~$100 range), use them with Android phones and Linux computers without any issue. The sound quality is par for the price but pairing, connecting, and disconnecting works just like with wired headphones.

Care to share which ones? I'm trying to find some headsets within that range. I'm not an audiophile, just need to hear, and block out just enough external noise.

I can recommend Anker SoundBuds. They're pretty hopeless for listening to music but OK for YouTube videos and other general purpose computer audio listening and I've never had any issues with the Bluetooth functionality at all.

Considering my overwhelmingly negative experiences with Bluetooth in the past I'm only just now realising how lucky I've been with them, especially considering how cheap they were.

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

#89
post #6

Anyone have a Bluetooth earbuds that works flawlessly with Ubuntu? I recently got a pair of Funcl AI buds, works great with my phone but I connect on computer and there's constant skipping. I gather this is a common problem.

My apple airpods work well with my dell latitude. (skype conversations, music, etc) Frankly I was surprised it worked at all.

Likewise, mine work pretty well.

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

#90

Even if the OP had gotten the headset working with bluetooth they'd be disappointed. On Macs at least, using a headset with mic via bluetooth you get 8khz sampling, even if the headset can do more. Sounds terrible. Tried a bunch of esoteric plist changes to fix it. I switched to a USB wireless setup which works much better. Supposedly there are fixes ( http://ssrubin.com/posts/fixing-macos-bluetooth-headphone-au... )…

How odd. In Ubuntu it's just a case of changing the Bluetooth audio codec from a dropdown in the sound control panel. I set it once for my earbuds and it's worked fine ever since.
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