email on the move - dongle or cheap PAYG phone

usignuolo

My OH does not travel regularly on his work but when he does he can find himself travelling several days in succession to different places. In the last week he has been on the move in central London (several different hotels and bars), in a hotel in Sussex for 2 days and in Canary Wharf for 24 hours.

He is not particularly skilled computer wise and does not have a blackberry but relies on his mobile and laptop to keep in touch with base. He uses the laptop to collect his email which is how he gets quite a lot of work. He usually has to pick up email at the start or end of the day or in lunch breaks.

The last week has been a nightmare: the Sussex hotel wanted £15 per 24 hours for wifi coverage, the pubs/cafes where he had his meals in Canary Wharf simply did not offer any wifi at all and the same was true for the central London places where he stopped to eat.

He has been thinking of getting a dongle, but doesn't need any coverage at all some weeks as he is out on site intermittantly so is a bit reluctant to pay a monthly fee with a monthly rental phone.

Someone suggested, as he is usually working in a built up area with good mobile phone coverage, that he buys a cheap PAYG phone from 3 and connects his laptop to that to pick up and send emails. The writer said it costs 50p per day or £2.50 per week from 3 to do this

Anyone had any experience of this and can explain what he would need to buy to make it work? I assume it would be some sort of dial up. He only needs access to email (read and send btw.)

*Kat*

What mobile phoen is he on currently? I'm not sure about connecting laptop to 3 mobile phone or how that works? IMO, I would get the Tesco Pay as you go dongle, because they run off O2's network which is better than most, though, check out their tariff.

I just had a look on the Tesco mobile site, but it's not there :S weird. It only got released in our store last week so maybe it's not been put up yet..?

Donnie

usignuolo wrote: »

My OH does not travel regularly on his work but when he does he can find himself travelling several days in succession to different places. In the last week he has been on the move in central London (several different hotels and bars), in a hotel in Sussex for 2 days and in Canary Wharf for 24 hours.

He is not particularly skilled computer wise and does not have a blackberry but relies on his mobile and laptop to keep in touch with base. He uses the laptop to collect his email which is how he gets quite a lot of work. He usually has to pick up email at the start or end of the day or in lunch breaks.

The last week has been a nightmare: the Sussex hotel wanted £15 per 24 hours for wifi coverage, the pubs/cafes where he had his meals in Canary Wharf simply did not offer any wifi at all and the same was true for the central London places where he stopped to eat.

He has been thinking of getting a dongle, but doesn't need any coverage at all some weeks as he is out on site intermittantly so is a bit reluctant to pay a monthly fee with a monthly rental phone.

Someone suggested, as he is usually working in a built up area with good mobile phone coverage, that he buys a cheap PAYG phone from 3 and connects his laptop to that to pick up and send emails. The writer said it costs 50p per day or £2.50 per week from 3 to do this

Anyone had any experience of this and can explain what he would need to buy to make it work? I assume it would be some sort of dial up. He only needs access to email (read and send btw.)

If he can work out how to 'connect it to his laptop'.



Otherwise a USB modem would set him back £20. With that, he has a few options including Vodafone(£15 for 1GB with no time expiry. Useful for light usage), 3 Mobile(From £6 for 1GB 30 days duration.) or O2(from £2 for a day's usage including WiFi if available. Useful if near a Cloud WiFi Hotspot: The Cloud)

tom_petty

Just for email replying and browsing go for Blackberry or iPhone or any other smart phones. I had really bad experience with the dongles. Sick and tired with their "maximum coverage" issue!

Donnie

tom_petty wrote: »

Just for email replying and browsing go for Blackberry or iPhone or any other smart phones. I had really bad experience with the dongles. Sick and tired with their "maximum coverage" issue!

Not really a solution considering the cost involved. :eek: Especially when you still need mobile connection to get the thing to work anyway. ??

Sublime_2

I recently had to use Mobile Broadband with my PC as I had to wait two weeks before my "proper" landline broadband was installed.

It cost £30 for the dongle (although I was credited that back for the inconvenience, as I was a Virgin customer already). Then it cost £8 for every 30 days on a rolling contract which you can cancel anytime, paid by DD. Mine will be cancelled when the 30 days is up. I have rung Virgin to arrange.

The broadband dongle is now mine, and I can give them a ring whenever I want Mobile Broadband using this at £8 for every 30 days.

usignuolo

So - bear with me as I am new to this - do you put the dongle in the usb port on your laptop and it picks up a wireless signal from virgin which you can use to dial up as though you were on a phoneline? Do you need any special software on the laptop? Anyone know if T mobile does anything similar - the OH has a T Mobile PAYG phone at present.

Our son, aka gadget boy, has been burbling on about configuring a new android phone to "tether" to the laptop as a wifi hot spot. I guess though it is a bit more difficult than he figured as he is currently driving, with his wife up the west coast of america, and we were promised hourly tweets and photos on facebook. It has all gone quiet for the last two days.....

Sublime_2

usignuolo wrote: »

So - bear with me as I am new to this - do you put the dongle in the usb port on your laptop and it picks up a wireless signal from virgin which you can use to dial up as though you were on a phoneline? Do you need any special software on the laptop? Anyone know if T mobile does anything similar - the OH has a T Mobile PAYG phone at present.

Our son, aka gadget boy, has been burbling on about configuring a new android phone to "tether" to the laptop as a wifi hot spot. I guess though it is a bit more difficult than he figured as he is currently driving, with his wife up the west coast of america, and we were promised hourly tweets and photos on facebook. It has all gone quiet for the last two days.....

I quoted the virgin mobile, as it was a good deal (see here, although perhaps because I was a customer I got mine for £8), and was what I'd recently used. I'm a T-mobile customer (for my phone), and they do mobile broadband too (see here, and here).

With Virgin, the price is competitive, but there is either a 1Gb, or 3Gb usage allowance. For T-mobile, I'm not sure if there are any data usage restrictions, and there is always the Mobile Broadband booster option, which your OH could use to connect their phone to the internet. My concern with this is that you said he is not very skilled with computers, so might not be the best option.

bonzer

usignuolo wrote: »

The last week has been a nightmare: the Sussex hotel wanted £15 per 24 hours for wifi coverage, the pubs/cafes where he had his meals in Canary Wharf simply did not offer any wifi at all and the same was true for the central London places where he stopped to eat.

Might just be eating too up-market There's a few national chains that do free Wi-Fi including McDonalds, Costa Coffee and Wetherspoons I think.

TwistedPsycho

In London of course, the "Golden Square Mile" has blanket free broadband anyway, so any bars/cafes in the area do not need to offer their own.

usignuolo

We were in Henry Addingtons in Canary Wharf the other day and they said they had no wifi internet access in the pub at all - paid or free. So we went along 50 yards to Cafe Rouge and they said they didn't either. So who does have access to the City's free broadband? Certainly not visitors to the area.