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For as long as I can remember, printers have always

been a hassle to connect to. First, you need to buy

that expensive IEEE 1284 parallel printer port or

USB cord, both of which often cost upwards of $20

and are never included with the printer. What if you

want to share a printer among multiple computers?

You can buy a printer with a built-in NIC, but you’ll

be forced to pay a bit of a premium to have the extra

capability. Throwing a printer on a network and then

mapping all of the computers to use the local printer

is a fully viable option, and one that is employed

by this Editor, but then you need to worry about collecting

all of the drivers and making sure that the drivers

work properly under each workstation’s operating system.

Just use a generic driver, you say. You could, but

with a printer like my Epson

ColorStylus 990, features like ink notification

and even a super-effecient high-quality draft mode

(super fast yet very clear text) are unavailable unless

you have the right driver. Help! I want to untangle

all of those Ethernet cables, printer cables, and

uninstall my drivers. And, I want to be able to print

from any CF-friendly device, including a Pocket PC.

Bluetooth, of course, is here to rescue you from your

printer woes. Anycom’s PM-2000 allows you to transform

any printer with an IEEE 1284-compatible port into

a Bluetooth client aware, hard copy producing monster.

Though a lot of the new super economy printers (the

disposable ones that cost less than $50, almost as

much as replacement ink) only support USB, just about

all other printers have a parallel port. Just snap

it over the male 1284 port, plug in the AC adapter

if you can’t get power from pin 18 of the parallel

port connection (like me), and you can use either

the Bluetooth Printing standard function or Anycom’s

   Kill the wires. All of them!

Got 25 Pocket PCs, all of which you might need to

print from at a given time? Don’t individually configure

each to work with a specific printer. Just pop in

your Bluetooth card, run Bluetooth printing, and your

printer will quickly be detected, ready to go to work.

Up to 460 kbps data transfer is supported, which is

only three times faster than serial, which maxes out

at 115.2 kbps (unless your motherboard allows you

to ramp up this speed, at which point connectivity

becomes less of a guarantee). But how often will you

find yourself printing a 10 megabyte document from

   As is the case with most Anycom

products, you don’t get much in the package, though

I suppose that nicely meshes with the idea of Bluetooth

being a scenario simplifier (i.e. fewer wires and

found it odd that the stenciling on the box model

the box are instructional manuals for Windows 95/98,

Windows 2000, an out-of-date driver CD, an AC adapter,

was the first Anycom (Anycom or AnyCom?) product I

had reviewed, but I found the hardware construction

to be quite acceptable. In dead-center is the AC adapter

is the back end of the PM-2000, which fits snugly

on the parallel print port of your printer. Notice

the Bluetooth compliance. Version of compliance is

v1.0b (with critical errata certified). I’m a bit

weary about these "non-intelligent" snap-ons

that use the first Bluetooth protocol version. What

happens if we see a major upgrade around the corner

to better deal with other wireless device types? Only

items that plug into computers like CF and PCMCIA

   Installation couldn’t be easier!

To start, expose the back of your

most printers, it has a readily-accessible parallel

plug the card into the port, snap the wire loops closed,

my Epson doesn’t apparently support powering through

the 18-th 1284 pin, I was forced to use the external

AC adapter. In a sense, this kind of defeats the purpose

of wireless-ness, since I just added another wire

to the back of my printer. For a reason that’s beyond

me, when I didn’t use the AC adapter, the printer

sounded like it was cycling through cleaning the heads,

but did so continuously. Immediately after plugging

    If you can call Bluetooth

(v1.0b) the soul of the PM-2000, then a product called

Anycom

PocketPRINT v3.0 (to be confused with Field

Software‘s PrintPocketCE)

is the heart. I poke fun at the naming because both

are written by Field Software, and aside from the

product names and a few splash screen imagery differences,

they are precisely the same products. Interestingly,

I was denied a full copy of PocketPRINT but immediately

was provided for by Tim Field, president of

launching PocketPRINT for the first time, you are

informed of the support file types: Pocket Word (.PWD),

text, Rich Text files (.RTF), Pocket Excel (.PXL),

is the initial screen. Notice how closely it resembles

Pocket Word itself. The default view is .PXL and .TXT

files. Clicking on one of the documents brings up

be using the Epson ESC/P 2 driver, and because only

Anycom BT cards can print to the PM-2000, I have no

choice but to use the port selection you see above.

I tried printing to the PM-2000 through various Compaq

BT solutions, and each time the print module came

up as an unknown BT device. I think it’s unfair that

you’re limited to using Anycom products, since you’re

simply using the generic Bluetooth Printing protocol

to do the handshaking. [Editor's Note: This is

layer below the Bluetooth Printing specification,

none of these are usable if your target is the PM-2000,

PrintPocketCE (oops–I mean PocketPRINT) supports

the Socket BT line as well as printers virtually mapped

you want even more choices, click the "More Settings"

button in the standard options window. Here you can

tweak margins, change how the paper is fed, change

serial settings, and choose to deal with images and

ink in special ways. I never had to play with these

OK gets the printing kicking. As I mentioned earlier,

at this point Bluetooth Printing takes over, so there’s

no reason why all BT cards can’t access the PM-2000.

Once the printer is found (done without having to

back to the main options for Pocket Word, we see some

sure when this would ever be useful, but the Resize

Options window lets you globally increase or decrease

the size of the fonts in your document. Quick Print

Flag, when checked, bypasses the basic options window

you see a few screen shots up. This is useful when

you want to keep the same printer and communication

you select Plain Text Flag, you’ll be brought to this

screen each time you print. Again, I’m not sure why

an option like raw text printing would be useful when

you’re trying to print a Pocket Excel file, but the

feature is here should you want it. Let’s jump to

exciting, and no options appear until you click the

of the options are self-explanatory. It’s nice to

see that there is some flexibility, but I am wondering

e-mail printing is interesting. While the Word and

Excel views seem to embed the Pocket PC applications

within the screen, the e-mail view mode looks like

it handles entry formatting itself. Clicking on an

e-mail brings up exactly the same screens as Pocket

useful options are included that allows you to specify

the order in which e-mail pieces are printed as well

change the current e-mail folder, just click "Show"

like you would do in Inbox. That’s about it in terms

    So what was it like to

have the ability to print via my Pocket PC without

any wires? Frankly, I have little need to print Pocket-sized

documents! If I could somehow print from the ClearVue

Viewers, which wonderfully display Microsoft Office

documents without conversion, then perhaps I would

freely print Inbox items containing .DOC attachments.

However, to first have to use ActiveSync to convert

to .PWD or .PXL and only then have the ability to

print from the Pocket PC doesn’t seem like a time

saver or even that valuable of a proposition. This

argument, of course, only attacks the value of PrintPOCKET.

This is not to say that the PM-2000 module can’t be

really well utilized by a laptop with an Anycom BT

card. Of course, currently the Bluetooth Printing

protocol only supports raw text, so until something

better appears for the desktop (and it very well might

already exist!), we’re going to be held back by the

In terms of performance, even the most complex Pocket

Word documents I tried to print took less than three

seconds to spool to the printer. And how about range?

Around 25 feet with many apartment obstacles between

the BT card and the printer–impressive! I was afraid

of possible 802.11b interaction, but even with my

WiFi network sending packets in a frenzy, neither

my Internet connection nor my Bluetooth access hiccupped.

Maximum range is quoted at 33 feet, but the range

    The print module itself

doesn’t require any user interaction, so a manual

would be pretty unnecessary. If you do have problems

with the printer, you’ll need to place a toll call

to 949-553-8991 (California). Alternatively, you can

e-mail them.

A page of current

drivers are available, a handy resource since

only Anycom cards will work with the PM-2000. For

descriptions of the elements of each window, context-sensitive

this review, I have been complaining about the usefulness

of only printing files handled by Pocket Word, Pocket

Excel, and Inbox. Do me a favor: in the discussion

thread (link below), please let me know if you

would take advantage of this. If you have no problems

with turning your Pocket PC into a printing job initiator,

the PM-2000 kit is right for you. Software is "easy"

to improve, so I am confident in the future we will

see native support for full desktop Office documents.

That being said, there are two significant grips I

good reason, corporate printers are often password

protected so system administrators can control how

much output occurs at a specific print station. If

you snap a PM-2000 module onto your printer, that

layer of protection is gone. Unlike with a Pocket

PC BT to Pocket PC BT pairing, which requires a passcode,

the print module doesn’t ask for a passcode. This

could become a problem! Printing restrictions might

be cast to the wind if you start seeing plugging blue

and this is the most aggravating issue I stumbled

across, is that non-Anycom BT cards cannot properly

print to or even recognize the PM-2000. That’s a major

economics consideration! If your company isn’t willing

to only use Anycom cards, then you’ll be looking for

another print solution. I see no reason why PM-2000

access shouldn’t or can’t be opened up to other cards,

like the excellent Socket

can buy the Anycom

Bluetooth Printer Module for $159.00 plus shipping

from Anycom directly (sorry, I couldn’t find an online

retailer that offers the PM-2000). Also available

is the PocketPRINT

software for $49.00. Interestingly, Field Software’s

PrintPocketCE, which carries identical functionality

as PocketPRINT, can be purchased for only $39.00 at

the pocketnow

Store. If I were you, I’d save the $10 and support

Tim Field’s work. [Editor's Note: Starting two

Bluetooth printing is a great concept that

I hope will eventually take off. It is, after all,

one of the first Bluetooth demonstrations that most

of us in the industry saw at conventions many months

ago. Is it where it should be? It looks like the handshaking

routines and proper use of the 2.4 GHz frequency band

is well contained

In addition, I am hoping to see greater capacity built

into PocketPRINT. I honestly wouldn’t consider going

after the PM-2000 unless you’re willing to drop the

$39 or $49 for the enhanced printing software. Who

in their right mind wants to print only raw text?

Without PocketPRINT, that’s all you can do with the