Instead of connecting your phone to your laptop, you can more easily connect a dongle. These little devices are amazing bits of technology when you consider that simply plugging them in and waiting a few minutes gets you connected to mobile broadband far quicker and easier than either configuring your phone or indeed connecting your PC, router and ADSL modem to a wired connection.
In my experience the maximum speed you can expect to connect to the internet using a dongle is about 2Mb/sec if you happen to be in a 3G area. While cruising along the coast or sitting in most marinas I would anticipate speeds of around 1Mb/sec.
Make
Ovation MC930D
Max speed achieved
440k/sec
Average speed achieved in 3G area
318k/sec
Average speed achieved out of 3G area
348k/sec
Make
Huawei E169G
Max speed achieved
2.6Mb/sec
Average speed achieved in 3G area
1.6Mb/sec
Average speed achieved out of 3G area
1.0Mb/sec
Make
Option Icon 225
Max speed achieved
1.3Mb/sec
Average speed achieved in 3G area
650k/sec
Average speed achieved out of 3G area
320k/sec
Make
Huawei E170
Max speed achieved
2.1Mb/sec
Average speed achieved in 3G area
2Mb/sec
Average speed achieved out of 3G area
964k/sec
Make
Huawei E172
Max speed achieved
1.9Mb/sec
Average speed achieved in 3G area
1.3Mb/sec
Average speed achieved out of 3G area
890k/sec
So the installation is easy and the speeds are fine for down loading email, GRIB files, and even browsing the web – the real problem is the cost. Prices in the UK are coming down – you can get access for £10/month and you can get roaming across Europe for £10/day – elsewhere the prices are many times higher…well the Telecoms companies are so poor aren’t they?
A number of people have written asking about errors connecting their brand new Nokia smartphones to their University WLAN.
If your University uses Eduroam then it will use a type of EAP (Extended access protocol) called EAP-TTLS PAP. other types of EAP are EAP-PEAP and EAP-MSCHAPv2 .
This is a problem with Symbian S60 phones including Nokia – they dont support the EAP-TTLS PAP protocol.
Another reason that I decided to get a Windows Mobile 6 Pro phone.
Test Rig:
Laptop: Acer 5022WLMi + Windows Vista Ultimate
Phone: Samsung i780 + Windows Mobile6 Pro
1. DONGLE
Start with checking that your Bluetooth connection is the latest version.
This is critical if you are running Windows Vista on your laptop, but not as important if you are running Windows XP. If you are running Windows XP then click here for advice on how to deal with XP as opposed to Vista.
The Acer laptop I use does not have built in Bluetooth, and I am running Windows Vista, so the first step was to buy a Bluetooth dongle. The one I selected was the Anycom USB200, which I bought on Amazon.
This dongle has:
o USB 2.0
o Data transmission up to 3Mb/s
o Class 2 (20 m / 66 feet range)
o Vista approved drivers
Follow the instructions and install the drivers and then the dongle.
o DO NOT believe any prompts from VISTA to “connect your hardware”
o FINISH the drivers install first – then REBOOT the laptop – then ATTACH the dongle.
This is critical if your are using Vista – if you are using XP the install will work normally…
- remember software first – then reboot – then attach the dongle
2. PHONE
In the Bluetooth settings on the Samsung i780, you will see a dialogue box with 4 tabs (Devices-Mode-COM ports-FTP) – all phones/PDA’s with Bluetooth will have similar options – somewhere! – even if they are running Symbian rather than Windows Mobile6.
MODE
- Set Bluetooth ON
- make the device VISIBLE to others
FTP – Tick all the following boxes
o Bluetooth authentication
o File transfer authentication
o Able to write
o Shared folder = \My Documents
Now select Internet Sharing and you will see two drop down boxes:
o PC Connection – Set this to “Bluetooth PAN”
o Internet connection – Set this to the internet connection from your mobile supplier. So for example, this setting is set to “Orange Internet” on my phone.
Now select “Connect” and you should be given a confirmation that the process has succeeded..
“Device setup finished. On the PC connect Bluetooth PAN”
So this is showing that you “connect” the phone to a PAN (personal area network) first before connecting the laptop to the phone….
3. LAPTOP
Assuming your Bluetooth dongle is installed and setup correctly on your laptop, you should see the Bluetooth icon in your task bar.
Right click on the icon and select “Join a Personal Area Network”
You should see a box that displays your phone as an icon and also confirmation that it is acting as…
o Network Access Point
o Bluetooth NAP Service
….Click on Connect
You should now see the network icon in you task bar jump into life …
- hover over the icon and it should display the name of the network (PAN) it is connected to and show that access is “local and internet”
Launch your browser or email client – you should be able to access the internet at about 1Mb/s
… in the London area this may even exceed 2Mb/sec – that’s higher than some people get on their wired broadband after contention with everyone else sharing the line!…but for our purposes I am assuming you are in a less well served marina or along the coast somewhere.
While you are browsing the phone can still receive calls and SMS text messages and will operate as normal. I have found that certain operations disrupt internet sharing such as having an alarm set in my diary which goes off – this seems to stop the phone doing anything until the alarm is cleared.
If you are going to browse the internet for a while – say 15 mins or more I would advise plugging the phone power charger in to keep the batteries topped up – Bluetooth is very draining on the phone’s battery.
If you havn’t bought a phone yet then I highly recommend that you buy a phone using Windows Mobile6 Professional – sorry for those that have already got a phone with a previous version
My minimum spec list for a good smart phone is:
1. Bluetooth
2. 3G
3. WM6 Professional (version 6 or later )
4. WiFi
5. GPS
6. Touchscreen (for experimenting with maps and GPS!)
For a list of phones that have this spec click here. (0ver 50 models in the UK at the present time…)
Strictly speaking :
Windows Mobile for Pocket PC is now Windows Mobile 6 Classic
Windows Mobile for Pocket PC Phone Edition is now Windows Mobile 6 Professional
Windows Mobile for Smartphone is now Windows Mobile Standard
So my test rig phone – the Samsung i780 – is a “Pocket PC” rather than a smartphone, according to Microsoft …
7 visitors online now 1 guests, 6 bots, 0 members Max visitors today: 15 at 09:21 am GMT This month: 16 at 02-01-2012 10:33 pm GMT This year: 24 at 01-05-2012 12:54 pm GMT All time: 134 at 12-17-2010 11:21 pm GMT
January 1st, 2008|
No comments - be the first!
Comments