SynApps The Open Source and Gadget blog

The other day a neighbor of mine asked me for some help getting an address book (actualy a XLS file) into a Bluetooth enabled mobile Siemens DECT handset.  Of course the software that comes with the phone runs on Windows only.

I don't have a Boot Camp Windows version on my MBP because for whatever reason Boot Camp crashes when partitioning the disk. But I do have a XP VMWare VM. So I was playing around with pairing the phone in OS-X and giving the serial connection to the Windows VM - with no success. Then I read a post (somewhere) that you can install Apples Windows drivers not only into a natively running version of Windows but also in a VM.

Just insert the Leopard DVD (make sure that the VM has access to the physical drive) and wait a couple of minutes for the drivers to install; reboot the VM and your're done. The VM now has access to Bluetooth and some other hardware, like iSight.

The next steps involved the usual convert/import into outlook/curse/curse more/get depressed/try something else/eventual it works/ cycle. But that's something for a different blog.