Office-Wide Bluetooth issue?

June 13, 2016 7:11 AM

I'm in a small office that has all newish Mac desktop computers. The last week or so- five of us have all been experiencing connection issues with our wireless keyboards and mice. They disconnect and reconnect at random, but I can't figure out why this is happening. What the heck is going on?

Some people have also been complaining about very slow performance, so our boss wiped all the computers over the weekend. Today virtually everyone is out of the office- but two of us are still having issues with our mice/keyboards. Batteries are fine, there are no alerts popping up, nothing looks amiss.

Just in case it matters- We're all on Firefox or Safari just beginning two weeks ago when we started noticing a slow down in our machines. The boss thought it was because Chrome was sucking all the processing power up like an anteater.

Anyone have any ideas?

posted by Blisterlips to Technology (5 answers total)

Thinking about your description, I'd want a better account of the slowdown on the machines. Is it just that webpages are loading more slowly? If that's the case, thinking about it in connection with the bluetooth issues, makes me think you might have something in the area causing interference affecting your wifi and bluetooth signals.

Apple has a troubleshooting guide for Wifi and Bluetooh interference: here.
posted by dis_integration at 7:19 AM on June 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Does everyone have the same model keyboard and mouse? If so, have someone with a problem try another brand/model.
posted by cnc at 9:23 AM on June 13, 2016

2.4 Ghz can be pretty polluted, and I find my macbook bluetooth is wonky when I have my gigabit ethernet thunderbolt adapter connected.
posted by nickggully at 9:55 AM on June 13, 2016

Did a microwave recently get placed somewhere nearby?

Microwave ovens can cause interference in the 2.4Ghz frequency band used by Bluetooth devices.
posted by Nerd of the North at 12:51 PM on June 13, 2016

Wiki: The USB 3.0 computer cable standard has been proven to generate significant amounts of Electromagnetic interference that can interfere with any Bluetooth devices a user has connected to the same computer. Various strategies can be applied to resolve the problem, ranging from simple solutions such as increasing the distance of USB 3.0 devices from any Bluetooth devices to purchasing better shielded USB cables.

Also, anecdotally, when we turned on our video baby monitor, our WiFi became useless (Netflix and chill? More like buffering and wait) and it also interfered with Bluetooth.
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:51 PM on June 13, 2016