Bluesmirf Help with ARduino

I’m having no success at transferring data between my Vista PC and my Arduino.

First tried setting up the connection using the default Windows Bluetooth utility. It finds and recognizes the device, shows that it has an incoming and outgoing COM port but I’m not able to show any data being passed along on any COM ports from the ARduino serial monitor and also from a simple processing sketch (…which works fine when arduino is connected directly to USB via COM4)…and I did change the processing code trying to use both of the COM ports that seem to be available through the Bluesmirf. No luck.

I installed some software that came with the USB bluetooth Dongle…BlueSoleil. With that software, I was able to get a connection verified by green LED on bluesmirf. I tried to monitor/view any data passage on the COM port established by BlueSoleil still with no luck.

My ARduino IDE ran very slow while BlueSoleil was active and both the Vista Bluetooth setup and the Blueseleil ran in buggy fashion…freezing up…inconsistent results when connecting device, etc.

I’m wishing I had bought an Xbee setup now. Dang it. Welcome any advice. I’m cursing Bluetooth’s name.