August 22, 2006
From the desk of Jane Galt:Bleg
Is there a telephone headset that can also be used as PC headphones? Inquiring minds want to know.
Posted by Jane Galt at August 22, 2006 3:04 PM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksI like the Boom.
http://www.theboom.com/theboomquiet.html
I use one manufactured by blueparrot. It's Bluetooth enabled and that works with both my laptop and my cell phone.
Whoops it's blueparrott (with two T's).
http://www.blueparrott.com/
Usually, any headset with a microphone can be used for both general listening and computer-based telephony, since the interface in either case is the soundcard.
Broaden your search beyond explicitly-telephony devices, though. With online games increasingly incorporating voice-chat, there are many decent-quality headphone/boom-mic sets available under different marketing guises.
I just bought Plantronix bluetooth headset.
My apple did not recognize my voice, but I think the microphone might be bad. I'm returning it to amazon in exchange for another. If that doesn't work, I'll look for other options.
Bluetooth headsets are fine for telephony, but aren't that great for general-purpose computing and are terrible for voice recognition; if they work for cellphones, they're using 8KHz bandwidth, which isn't enough for voice recognition, which needs 16KHz bandwidth at a minimum. Unfortunately, most cellphones can't accept a 16KHz stream, and the market is pushing Bluetooth towards cellphones, so while it's *feasible* to get a good Bluetooth headset, it's almost impossible to actually get one.
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