I have absolutely no real use for a 3G portable wireless network router.
So I went out and got one. A vodaphone pre-pay wifi router, just a smallish one that only allows five connections, even though I only need one connection for the laptop (assuming I ever need to use it).
Ongoing costs are $20 a month for 1Gb of expiring data usage (with additional packages ordered on demand above that if needed)… and if I can’t be bothered using it and I don’t top it up the sim card number will stay active for 12months after the last topup, so if I don’t use it the cost is only $20 a year (as long as if I am intending to use it I top it up the month I want to use it).
Sooo, take it to the beach in summer, forget about it in winter ?. Anyway it’s tiny and portable so go into the laptop bag along with the portable disk, portable mouse, headphones, usb powered light stick, etc… I’m starting to realise why that bag is so heavy.
I chose a wifi router rather than a vodem stick as I run linux, even on my personal laptop; and I know it has no trouble connecting to wireless routers as I use wireless at home.
Plus the company I work requires us to use linux laptops and vodems for the ‘rapid response teams’ who have to be able to logon from anywhere and any time, and basically the result was vodems don’t play well with linux. So I spent the extra few dollars for my personal use on something that should just work… at least until I start playing with the settings on it :-)
Hmmm, as its only 1Gb a month I should try to remember to disable the laptop autostarting the dropbox daemon; plus the ownCloud daemon that syncs against my home servers as well.
But a new toy. I’ll have to drive into the middle of nowhere now to see what the coverage is like.
