Pay as you go USB modem stick with no contract and £15 per GB usage charge, just top up when you want to. Ideal for me and I suspect others where mobile broadband would be of occasional use but not enough to justify a £15 per month contract. GPRS and 3G available out of the box, even works here where the mobile signal is awful. Max download speed with good signal is 3.6Mbps. Built-in windows app which installs from the stick and a micro-SD slot for up to 4GB for handy storage.
Bought one, works fine with no configuration whatsoever on Fedora 10 under Gnome and NetworkManager. Which means it should work for the whole Red Hat family (Fedora, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Centos etc etc) as long as kernel and Gnome revisions are correct.
We’ve got one for work, as the credit has no expiration date on this deal, unlike some of the other pay as you go mobile deals. Since when is pay as you go with a 30day credit expiration not a 30day contract
In the office, the three stick get’s better speed, but at the pub the Vodafone is better :lol:
DT, you have the old 3 dongle didn’t you? How’s the Voda stick compare? I need to check when my contract ends with 3, but this Voda one sounds better in long run.
I prefer the stick when on the train as I hate the dongleyness of the dongle In terms of software, I prefer the 3 software, but pretty sure I could munge it to use the same software as it’s essentially the same device. My 3 contract is not getting renewed and I’ll be getting a Vodafone pay as you go stick, as that fits my current usage more now, I spend a lot less time on the road as what I was 6 months ago.
One pain, if you have both software installed you have to de-activate the autodetect that opens the software when you plug in a dongle, it simply never gets the right software for the right dongle !
Wow. The timing couldn’t get any more perfect. My 3 contract ends at the end of this month. Sounds like the Vodafone stick is the way to go. I went on the 3gig/month plan “in case” I went over the cheaper plan, but the speeds and my usage never went that high.
My only concern is security, I’m used to sitting behind a dedicated firewall and I presume this will plug you straight into the net with only a software firewall for protection ?
This concerns me because I was going to put one on my Mums new PC and the attrition rate has been high from virus attacks and trojan installs, mostly from people mailing jokes and other dubious stuff.
Advice to avoid opening attachments has been ignored “Its from cousin Maureen, she wouldn’t ever send out a Virus”
Hmmm, this cousin Maureen seems to be pedalling pharmaceuticals as a sideline now and strongkey-rc1.3-build-208.exe doesnt sound very funny.
The prospect of portscanning and direct attacks just further raises the threat level.
The next question I have is how much intelligence does the dongle have ?
If its in a powered USB hub will it be connected to the net in any way ?
Dont want the pre-pay credit getting eaten up by the whole of Korea trying to hack its way into a USB hub port.
draytek have brought out a couple of routers for it, but then that kills the cheapness.
The dongle has no intelligence at all, and neither do a large number of people of the train to London when I use my eeepc with the dongle to setup a ‘internet access, enter your credit card here’ access point
Software firewall is the only option with the dongle really.
If it’s the same as the other dongle, you still need to “dial in” so just plugging it in doesn’t give you a connection until then.
Oh, quick question while I’m here. I used to be on T-mobile one before Three, and they used image compression on their network. Three don’t, which is nice. Do Voda use image compression or not?
[QUOTE=mackerel;443617]If it’s the same as the other dongle, you still need to “dial in” so just plugging it in doesn’t give you a connection until then.
Oh, quick question while I’m here. I used to be on T-mobile one before Three, and they used image compression on their network. Three don’t, which is nice. Do Voda use image compression or not?[/QUOTE]
I’m not sure, once I get back from lunch (pub) I’ll see about having a go with the one on my desk.
Got one today I am twice as happy as I have the Vodafone version of the Dell Mini 9 purchased via PC-world without the stupid exploitive Vodafone contact.
Just whipped the sim out of the dongle and plugged it into the Mini9 its as happy as larry.
Unless I am looking in the wrong place you can’t get a Pay as you go sim on its own via Vodaphone so this was perfect as its only a emergency backup.
Wonder if I should stick with Three then… if I can get a direct dongle from somewhere as I’m getting tiered of the puck.