Which mobile for ISP link?
r.s.aylett
but as I'm tired of crawling around hotel bedrooms trying to find the
telephone plug when I'm away on business, I was thinking of getting one. I
plan to use it to link to my G3 laptop via IR to make a dialup to my ISP,
which in the UK tends to be BT.
Are some phones better than others for this? Are they Mac-friendly? As a
complete novice on mobiles I'd be very interested to hear what has worked
well for people out there.
Ruth
----
--
Ruth Aylett
zoara
> I must be the only person in the country who hasn't got a mobile phone,
I think you are. :)
> but as I'm tired of crawling around hotel bedrooms trying to find the
> telephone plug when I'm away on business, I was thinking of getting one.
> I plan to use it to link to my G3 laptop via IR to make a dialup to my
> ISP, which in the UK tends to be BT.
Be warned, doing things that way can be *very* expensive, especially if
you get a pay as you go phone. And slow, 9.6kbps versus 56kbps for
ordinary dialup.
The ISP doesn't matter, though if you get unmetered service from BT they
probably only allow that from your home line [1] so you'll need to find
out their standard dialup number. From then on the mobile acts like a
normal modem.
If you want to plump for GPRS then everything's different. It's faster
(though still not as quick as a home line), probably more expensive
(probably a lot more) and is definitely more complex to set up.
Oh, and IR can be problematic in strong sunshine. You could consider
bluetooth, but that would add to the cost substantially (the phones
generally cost more, and you need a fifty quid bluetooth adapter on the
Mac)
> Are some phones better than others for this?
Yes. Some phones don't have IR. Some that do are *crap* at doing the
whole connect to the internet thing. As to which, I really can't
remember, you could ask in uk.telecom.mobile if you get no luck here.
-z-
[1] Even calls to 0800 numbers cost money on mobile phones.
--
"I'm not sure how useful this is, but it's bloody clever."
- Jonathon Sanderson in uk.comp.sys.mac
Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow?
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting
Ryan Callaghan
> r.s.aylett <r.s.aylett-...@salford.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > I must be the only person in the country who hasn't got a mobile phone,
>
> I think you are. :)
>
> > but as I'm tired of crawling around hotel bedrooms trying to find the
> > telephone plug when I'm away on business, I was thinking of getting one.
> > I plan to use it to link to my G3 laptop via IR to make a dialup to my
> > ISP, which in the UK tends to be BT.
>
> Be warned, doing things that way can be *very* expensive, especially if
> you get a pay as you go phone. And slow, 9.6kbps versus 56kbps for
> ordinary dialup.
>
> The ISP doesn't matter, though if you get unmetered service from BT they
> probably only allow that from your home line [1] so you'll need to find
> out their standard dialup number. From then on the mobile acts like a
> normal modem.
>
> If you want to plump for GPRS then everything's different. It's faster
> (though still not as quick as a home line), probably more expensive
> (probably a lot more) and is definitely more complex to set up.
Cost isn't /too/ bad, I've recently been checking out the prices from
Orange with a view to upgrading my handset and getting GPRS service.
Anyway, for a contract phone, there are a couple that do GPRS for free,
though I, wanted GPRS+IR+Bluetooth, so that I can use my palm and PB via
IR, and upgrade them to bluetooth later without having to buy a new
phone. The cheapest handset to do that is a £30 Nokia one, with an
impressive 17 days battery life, though the Sony/Ericsson t68i does much
the same for substantially more (It has a colour screen and you can plug
a camera into it) however I don't like either of these too much, so I'm
waiting for something else to come along.
As to the connection charges, it's billed per byte, at about £4/MB,
though you can buy bundles, like 5MB/month for £15, with lower cost per
MB when you run over the limit.
--
Ryan Callaghan icq: 20957015 email callagrm<at>aston.ac.uk
zoara
> > If you want to plump for GPRS then everything's different. It's faster
> > (though still not as quick as a home line), probably more expensive
> > (probably a lot more) and is definitely more complex to set up.
>
> Cost isn't /too/ bad,
[...]
> As to the connection charges, it's billed per byte, at about Ł4/MB,
> though you can buy bundles, like 5MB/month for Ł15, with lower cost per
> MB when you run over the limit.
Yeah. This sounds like a huge amount of money to me. I'm okay using GPRS
for a few small WAP pages, I could stretch to downloading emails in an
emergency, but anything else is too byte-heavy to consider paying
anything in the region of ŁŁs per byte. Pennies, maybe.
Or am I just a tightarse?
-z-
Simon Slavin
r.s.aylett-...@salford.ac.uk (r.s.aylett) wrote:
Your biggest decider is how your phone should be talking to your
laptop. Since you have a laptop with IR and not, say, Bluetooth,
you need to be asking about phones with IR. I use one: a Nokia
8310e, connected to Orange. It's incredibly useful in hotels
(and once from a barbeque on a beach). My ISP is Demon and Demon
have excellent support for using mobile phones to connect. You
may find that BT also have special support people for this (but I
doubt they're any good).
As for Mac-friendliness, they're pretty standard. There's a guy
who has a page with mobile-phone drivers for Mac OS
which you might find useful if your choice of phone doesn't already
have a driver installed.
Bruce Horrocks
<m...@privacy.net> writes
>Yeah. This sounds like a huge amount of money to me. I'm okay using
>GPRS for a few small WAP pages, I could stretch to downloading emails
>in an emergency, but anything else is too byte-heavy to consider paying
>anything in the region of ŁŁs per byte. Pennies, maybe.
>
>Or am I just a tightarse?
You should go and work for a phone company - odds on you'll get it free.
;-)
--
Bruce Horrocks
Hampshire
England
b...@granby.demon.co.uk