I spent the first several hours of owning a new LifeDrive trying to figure out how to make the Bluetooth Hotsync work in Tiger. Apparently there's a small bug in the Hotsync Manager that causes the serial port to appear as a modem. This seems like a trivial fix, but since none of the [outsourced] tech support folks at PalmOne knew the answer, I figure this might help somebody else. I'm not sure if other Palm devices have this problem, but this may also help get the Treo working for anyone having trouble.
The first thing that needs to be done is to change the Bluetooth-PDA-Sync service into a serial-based service:
- Go into System Preferences -> Bluetooth -> Sharing
- Click on the Bluetooth-PDA-Sync service
- Select RS-232 from the 'Type' dropdown
- Uncheck 'Require pairing for security' if it happens to be checked
- Go into 'Devices' and delete any pairings you may have already attempted to set up. You won't need them for Hotsync.
Next, Hotsync needs to rebuild its list of ports. If you haven't already installed Hotsync, then you can install it now and skip this step.
- Disable the HotSync manager and close all Hotsync applications
- Use the finder to navigate to ~/Library/Preferneces/ByHost
- Drag all preferences beginning with 'com.palm' into the trash and empty (there should be at least three of them)
- Restart the HotSync manager
- Open HotSync Manager
- Click on the 'Connection Settings' tab
- You will notice that Bluetooth-PDA-Sync now has a different icon (it is no longer a modem). Check the box next to this connection.
- Enable HotSync
- Click on the Bluetooth button on your menu bar and choose Prefs -> Setup Devices -> PC Setup
- Click the button next to the HotSync icon labeled 'Set up your PC to synchronize using Bluetooth' and follow the instructions

