I suggest you just try and play and see what fits you best. Native XP/W7 stacks are very different and you might also have some 3rd party stack depending on your BT chip and XP SP version, so the only definitive answer would be to try it out. With DataWedge 3 and it's numerous plugins, I believe,  you can achieve everything w/o writing a single line of code, so it won't be too hard - just do it :) In terms of programming/usage SS1 stack is more powerful, while requiring a separate API (i.e. not MS BT API), while MS BT stack is less functional but more ubiquitous. Keep in mind if you need to distinguish between different MC3090s connected to the same laptop, and if laptop will support multiple BT Com Ports/HID Devices. If you have multiple COM ports, distinguishing between devices is easy. In case of HID devices you'd need to send some sort of prefix and then strip it in your application. BT is quite secure, you can have mutual device authentication and encryption. Again, your options will vary depending on the stack you use (on both sides). To be honest, if you need to use the device just as a BT scanner, I would suggest using BT scanner like DS6878/DS3578/etc or MT2070 - much easier :)

Great! I will get into all of this in the next few days, and come back with any good updates. Thanks for the help!

I suggest you try looking into bluetooth Serial or HID profile. Each mobile device has BT serial ports, if you can expose those ports to your laptop, you may them use some simple software to direct scanner input into serial port and then read from serial port on your laptop. In a similar way, if you connect mobile device as a HID device for your laptop, you could use DataWedge to type directly into your laptop :) I don't know if you use SS1 or MS BT Stack, but this is what I'd try.

Thanks for the quick response! This certainly points me in the direction of the next step. I still have some research to do on the subject though. From your post, I am going to research both Serial vs. HID, and SS1 vs. MS BT Stack. I would really appreciate any input on which options would work better for my efforts. Here is a little bit more detail on the situation... The laptop will be running Windows XP / 7, and the MC3190 has Windows Mobile 6.1 CE 5.2. Each are running ActiveSync 4.5. The common use case will have the laptop listening to multiple MC3190s. Is there any other information that would help define my best path? Also, security of data transfer is an important facet of this project. Any concerns there with any of the approaches would be very appreciated. Thanks again for the help!