I have finally got a reasonable mobile data connection for my laptop (pictured below), through a tangental series of events.
For a while I've been using my bluetooth enabled Sony Ericson T-610 phone as a GSM modem for my Powerbook and my Palm T3, achieving the pitful speed of 9,600Kb/s. It came to my attention that I could connect a lot faster using GPRS (which is 2nd generation mobile technology). However, when I did this on my last holiday, I soon found that I was burning up credit on my Virgin Mobile pay as you go account very quickly. It was clear to me that a data-specific subscription was the only sane way to be using GPRS, but once I was back home, I soon forgot about it all, and was content to use GSM for the odd bit of browsing on my T3.
The issue re-occured when I was attending a local community-based group where people often had practical issues that needed resolving that required information which was freely available on the web, but they were non-tech savy and had no computer at home. Looking at the funding for the group, it stated that internet access would be provided, and yet it wasn't being. The group met in a public building with no technical facilities, so a mobile data connection seemed the obvious answer.
I found a cheap data card on ebay, and brought it in to try with the organisation's laptop. Using the SIM card from the group's mobile was unsuccesful as the contract did not include data. The SIM from my phone worked fine though, but the GSM connection was painfully slow. GPRS was still way too expensive an option using my pay-as-you-go SIM card, so a few weeks later I bought a subscription costing 25 pounds a month plus 7.50 a month for (virtually) unlimited data. This worked amazingly well in the laptop. I'd like to say the story ended there, but internal politics and lack of common sense intervened. The upper management who administered the group would not agree to have their laptop used for internet access. So I ended up taking back the card and SIM for my own personal use.
What I haven't mentioned is that the subscription came with a free Motorola phone, which is very smart, and I now use with my old Virgin mobile SIM card. It includes a built in camera that takes quite nice photos (see below).
The data card I had was an Option Globetrotter, that worked okay in my old Thinkpad laptop, but the software was very slow to load, being designed for an XP computer of reasonable spec. My Dad's newer Thinkpad worked a lot better with it. Even so, ideally I wanted to be able to go mobile on my Apple Powerbook laptop. To achieve this would need either a dedicated Mac card or some special software. As the former seemed to be non-existent, I opted for the latter, buying a product called 'launch2net' from the Apple store. I was pleasantly surprised to find it recognised the card first go, but found that it did not seem able to connect. Then I found another cheap card on ebay that claimed to be Mac compatible. Although the bundled software rejected my SIM card as it was from another network, the launch2net utility recognised it and this time worked all the way. Finally my Powerbook has a decent mobile data connection that doesn't cost the earth.
