OneAndOneIs2

Mon, Mar 03, 2008

Gone mobile

The phone line at home broke on Friday. It took with it our Internet access.

At school, we HAVE Net access, but it's slow, firewalled, and only for the crappy old machines that are available infrequently. No wifi, no access to most useful sites - even google is mostly blocked.

So while I was in town on Saturday, I stopped off to look at the mobile broadband options they've been plugging on the radio lately.

It turned out that a 1GB pay-as-you-go for the next few months would be barely cheaper than a year's contract for 3GB per month. So I went with that. I got a small white thing that plugs into USB. Possibly it works with Linux, I haven't had the time or energy to try and find out yet.

But it works with my laptop running Windows. Internet access from anywhere, no firewall, no limits. It's even better than my home broadband because Thunderbird can actually use it to send email.

I already forgot how I lived without it :)

5 comments • Categories: Omni, Technology, My Life

Comments:

Comment from: ginny [Member]

· http://iamgenevieve.wordpress.com/

If I got such a thing for my new laptop, I'm not sure I'd ever go offline.

Permalink 03/03/08 @ 19:06

Comment from: sinn3r [Member]

· http://sinn3r.org/

we had the same situation a few weeks ago, too.

now i have a one-year-paid-by-parents umts flatrate, funny to sit in the mall and surfing.

and visiting friends is nice, too, i don't ring the door bell. no. i tell them via jabber, that i am waiting in front of their house *G*

and you're right, it's very easy to get used to it ;)

Permalink 04/03/08 @ 19:05

Comment from: alison [Member] · http://www.creativehedghog.com

mmm... I like the idea of this wireless. However, it seemed to take off in Aus *after* I bought my adsl subscription. (Free upgrade to a wifi router w00t!) For a family situation, it will be good to have the house drenched in wifi with just one box. You have to get a dongle for each computer with this system, right?

Permalink 05/03/08 @ 14:07

Comment from: oneandoneis2 [Member] · http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/

This system, your computer basically gets a USB mobile phone that it 'dials up' and connects to broadband via. It's GPRS rather than WiFi. So yes, you need a dongle per PC. Unless you get your machine acting as a WiFi gateway server :)

Permalink 05/03/08 @ 16:47

Comment from: hari [Member]

· http://hari.literaryforums.org

We've got things like that in India. The only difference is the crap speeds with get with those wireless connections.

It's worse than traditional dial-up.

Permalink 06/03/08 @ 16:23