Laptop and Vodafone Wireless Connection

Buzz_Irl

I have a laptop which has a linksys wireless nic for home use. Iwant o be able touse the laptop on the move.

I presume a i need a vodafone card and one of their plans?

anybody experience?

thks

FGR

If you can't get to a wifi enabled hotspot then yes..Vodagone/O2 cards are the way to go.

It's just a joke that they charge so much to use the service.

I wish I could use broadband in my rented accomodation but because of the lack of any ripwave-like options out there I have no hope in getting it.

If only WiMax was real .

tomk

The Vodafone card isn't the only option - you could also use infrared or bluetooth (preferably) to connect to a mobile, and from there to the net. I use Bluetooth and GPRS this way - nothing like broadband, but in the same range as decent dial-up.

rsynnott

ForegoneReality wrote:

If only WiMax was real .

WiMax is fast becoming real; first big rollouts started in Aisa. Might be a few years till it makes it here tho

Raideneire

The GPRS connection over Bluetooth isn't a bad idea. I have a nokia 6230 and used a bit of software off the nokia site which does the gprs for you - without any hassles. bit of simple tweaking to get it going but it'll connect for me now at 115.2 Kbps, which is dual isdn speed, thats not bad.

Dont know how much it costs for the Data Transfer over the mobile network though, point is though - it does what it says on the tin

Random

Serious? 115.2Kbps ?

**** me, when did we get that on mobiles... Costly though ?

rsynnott

ciaranfo wrote:

Serious? 115.2Kbps ?

**** me, when did we get that on mobiles... Costly though ?

He's probably Meteor (the others seem to artificially cap GPRS, possibly to drive demand for 3G. And yes. Insanely costly (See their website).

Raideneire

Not Meteor, the 115.2 Kbps is on a vodafone 6230. I have an O2 one aswell but haven't tried it. Why would i try it on my personal phone when it's all set up on my work phone

BigMoose

115.2 Kbps is almost certainly a lie on any network. In theory if you had 8 timeslots at 14.4 each you'd get 115.2, but that's not going to happen as that leaves no slot for upload plus I dont think any devices exist that use 8 or any network that allows it. Also the overheads mean you wont even get that. I think voda give 3 slots down and 1 up, giving about 43.2kb/s down - which is roughly what I get over GPRS. 3G will give 384kb/s down. These are max figures so local traffic will have an effect although I've found 3G pretty stable at the higher end of that figure.

As for why the software reports 115.2, using various phones and various bits of software (Nokia, Motorola, SE, Samsung) I have had totally different bit rates reported on the windows desktop that I know are total rubbish. Some higher than I actually get, some lower.

Sparky

with o2 i used the GPRS and downloaded 4mb in data and i got a bill or 112 euros from them, this was decent enough excuse for me to get broadband.

Maxwell

I used the d211 card and then the mobile connect card from Vodafone. I have to say that the connection speed and reliability is quite good - but the cost is absolutely crazy!
I also have used the bluetooth way of connecting and didn't think it was very good - it was quite good when connecting with an ipaq - but not a laptop.

le_swan

I downloaded the software from
http://www.o2.co.uk/o2connectionmanager
I tried using my wap.dol.ie settings that were on my phone but it just connected but didn't do anything.
I searched the net and found people using
open.internet as the apn
gprs as the username and password
So I connected up and away she went. It all looked promising , the network connection was giving me 115.2 and the infrared was saying 115.2 aswell.
BUT ALAS it was all but a pipe dream. It seemed far too slow for that speed so I tried zdnet.co.uk bandwidth test and info-techs and came up with 28kbits or 3.2kbytes per sec on the two tests which kinda sucks.
I'm trying to find vodafones connection manager now so I can test on another phone.

Upsetting isn't it.
Sean

BigMoose

You'll get that kind of speed of all GSM phones regardless of network. Anything from around 28.8 up to 43.2 (the voda 2G Mobile connect cards claim 57.6 but am not sure if that is true). You'll need a 3G phone or 3G data card for anything more.