{"id":262,"date":"2008-05-01T23:19:16","date_gmt":"2008-05-01T23:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=262"},"modified":"2009-05-17T16:12:06","modified_gmt":"2009-05-17T16:12:06","slug":"mobile-broadband-usb-dongle-modems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=262","title":{"rendered":"Mobile broadband – USB dongle modems"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been playing with a mobile broadband for the past few weeks, with a USB modem dongle courtesy of 3mobilebuzz<\/a>. In return for a three months free trial – free loan of the hardware, with free (unlimited) data usage – the deal is that I have to post my thoughts about it. So here goes \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"HuaweiThe idea<\/strong>
\nThe EEE PC<\/a>, and the slew of EEE PC alternatives that have followed it, have started to get more people thinking about mobile computing. It’s now possible (and not too expensive!) to have a fully-fledged personal computer that is so small that you can leave it in the bottom of a bag and have it with you all the time on the off-chance that it might come in useful. And so light that you’ll barely notice.<\/p>\n

I love the EEE PC<\/a>. You can do a surprising amount of work on such a small machine. With the built-in wifi, if I’m at home or in a coffee shop, I can get online and do even more.<\/p>\n

But that leaves a lot of places where I can’t get it online. <\/p>\n

And that’s what appealed about the idea of mobile broadband dongles. Because for the size and weight of something like a USB memory key in the bottom of my bag, the EEE PC can now be online (pretty much) anywhere.<\/p>\n

Plug it in, wait a few seconds, and it’s online. Internet access anywhere, anytime. Proper Internet. That is a very cool thing. <\/p>\n

\"Asus<\/a>The practicality<\/strong>
\nI’ve already written about getting it working on Linux<\/a>. In short, it’s a pain in the ass. It took a fair amount of hassle to figure out how to do it.<\/p>\n

But (a) 3 don’t claim that it should work on Linux (it’s Windows\/Mac only), and (b) the newer models they sell all apparently work fine on Linux and the EEE PC out of the box with no hacking needed. So I don’t think it’s too fair to bash them for this.<\/p>\n

And on a Windows laptop, it works great. It connects quickly, and the connection has been fast and reliable. As much as I am a fan of Internet on smartphones, sometimes you need the full keyboard and screen resolution of a laptop. <\/p>\n

The Windows drivers that get loaded when you first plugin does come with some 3 software to manage the connection. Eurgh… I hate having stuff like this installed on my machine, it’s bloated enough already. I wish they’d give you the option to just get the bare minimum drivers without needing their app to manage it. <\/p>\n

Still, perhaps I’m not a typical user – I’m not paying for this data. If I was paying by the MB, perhaps I’d be more appreciative of an application that let me monitor my data usage?<\/p>\n

The cost<\/strong>
\nSo I love the idea – get any machine online anywhere, anytime. <\/p>\n

Now the awkward bit… the cost. <\/p>\n

As with most call-plans, there are lots of options. You can see the costs for three’s data plans on their website<\/a> – but in short, you can pay \u00c2\u00a310, \u00c2\u00a315 or \u00c2\u00a325 a month, depending on whether you want an allowance of 1GB, 3GB or 7GB a month. And you can get it in Pay Monthly or Pay-As-You-Go flavours. <\/p>\n

I’ve not done a lot of shopping around to compare prices, but from a quick look around, that looks like it’s about as good a price as you can get at the moment. That said, if you thinking about mobile broadband, price comparison sites like uSwitch.com<\/a> have started to feature mobile broadband offers, so they’re probably a good place to start.<\/p>\n

I’m thinking we’re not at the point where you could replace your home broadband with this. With the top-range plan offering a 7GB allowance, that’s not enough. (For a Internet-addicted geek like me, anyway<\/em>). So I’d be looking at paying for home broadband, and mobile broadband. <\/p>\n

And I’ve got used to having my smartphones online all the time. I’m on the T-Mobile web’n’walk deal (unlimited internet for \u00c2\u00a37.50 a month) and I love it. (In fact, it’s pretty much the only thing I love about them, cos their coverage is shocking around here!<\/em>).<\/p>\n

So I could end up spending \u00c2\u00a316 a month for home broadband, \u00c2\u00a37.50 a month for phone broadband and say \u00c2\u00a310 a month for mobile broadband.<\/p>\n

Would I be happy to spend \u00c2\u00a333.50 a month to have Internet access anywhere, anyhow?<\/p>\n

Not sure… sounds like a bit of a lot. The networks seem to be aware of this, and combo packages have started to appear. For example, 3 offer half price for the mobile broadband deals<\/a> if you have a phone contract with them as well. \u00c2\u00a35 a month for mobile broadband starts to look pretty attractive… well, it might if I liked the looks of any of the phones they offered. <\/p>\n

It’s a shame, because as I was reading earlier today, 3 have started to get really interesting<\/a>, but I’m a smartphone geek, and that’s not something that 3 seem to be interested in. Either 3 need to get some more top-end mobiles, or the other networks need to start offering combo packages too. <\/p>\n

In the meantime, I’m loving my trial. I’m very grateful to 3mobilebuzz<\/a> for letting me play with it for a few months, and I’m ever so slightly scared that I’m gonna get too used to this by the time it comes to give it back! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been playing with a mobile broadband for the past few weeks, with a USB modem dongle courtesy of 3mobilebuzz. In return for a three months free trial – free loan of the hardware, with free (unlimited) data usage – the deal is that I have to post my thoughts about it. So here goes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[173,177,172,14,174],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-173","tag-3mobilebuzz","tag-eee-pc","tag-eeepc","tag-mobile-broadband"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}