Help choosing best wireless serial package

After nearly 3 full days trying to get bluetooth connectivity I am ready to throw in the towel.

I got as far as having wireless communication but its very inconsistent. One minute it works then for the next five hours I cant get it to connect again.

Problem might be windows 8 compatability because Ive tried it on two win8 64bit pcs and no luck on either.

What I need is to have an arduino collect sensor data and then send it wirelesly to a pc 3 feet away.
Since the bluetooth approach seems to be failing is there a better way???

I just need it to work every time no matter which pc is receiving the data.

I thought of maybe using xbee or a bluetooth modem to bluetooth modem setup where the pc end is not a bluetooth dongle but rather a bluetooth modem on a uart to usb interface????

It is short distance and a baud of 9600 would probably be enough... its the reliability that is killing me...

Hope some one has a good suggestion for this.
I didnt mention but I am trying to keep it as small as possible.

A bluetooth modem is acceptable in size, xbee...just barely but already getting too big for the enclosure.

How much data? Maybe Promini's with simple inexpensive 433 MHz Tx and Rx module would be enough.

What bluetooth model do you use ? I use HC-05. My experience is very similar to yours ! Can you perhaps provide more details such as

  • circuit description
  • sketches (Arduino, at least. What do you use on your computer to receive the data, Processing or something else ?)

good luck