"Mifi" portable wireless router / cellular modem


lulzfish

Pandora Defense Squad
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Jan 14, 2009
Messages
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Website
troyanonymous.homelinux.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/techn ... .html?_r=1

It's $270 for the device and $40 a month for the 250MB data plan. [dunno how much upload you get]
So, it's pretty expensive for now, but you get a portable wireless network that works with anything like an iPod Touch, a Pandora, a laptop, a Nintendo DS, etc...

And it's "about the size of 3 credit cards stacked together", so it's pretty small.

Maybe once the price comes down I'll get one. Or once I can afford $480 a year for mobile Internet.
 
You can also buy it without a contract and pay $15 for 24 hours. That'd be useful if you don't leave 802.11space too often.
 
"4 hours per charge" sounds pretty iffy. Tiny device, tiny battery, it has to have very high power requirements for what it does.
 
Sounds like a very very expensive plan?! In Germany I can get a prepaid gigabyte a month for 10 €... Do you usually pay that much in the US?
 
OrR said:
Do you usually pay that much in the US?
Yes, cell data is very expensive here, but it's even worse in Canada. I Probably have the cheapest possible data plan in the US, and I still pay $55 a month for 400 minutes and 3GB of data.

If you have a G1 or one of the better Nokia phones, there are applications that will let you use your phone as a 3G wifi router. It sucks my G1's battery dry in about 2 hours, but it does work.
 
I thought we had the worst mobile plans in Australia. Maybe not. I've got a Three prepaid account, $29 for 2GB. It's pretty good as a secondary connection.

Of course, then we have things like Telstra's entry level "occasional use" plan. $5 for 5MB - yes, megabytes - with an excess use charge of $1 per MB. It shouldn't be legal to offer plans like that to unsuspecting "mum and dad" customers. :(
 
Gruso said:
Of course, then we have things like Telstra's entry level "occasional use" plan. $5 for 5MB - yes, megabytes - with an excess use charge of $1 per MB. :(
A dollar a megabyte? :wacko: How would that be of any use to anyone? How "occasional" would your use have to be?
 
I know, it boggles the mind. They use tactics like this to fleece people for hundreds, sometimes thousands. The other day someone was talking about an American friend who is here on a work visa. The company gave him a phone, but didn't warn him about the cost. One month later: $15,000 bill (about $10k USD) :eek: Silly guy was obviously caning the torrents.

I shall speak no more about the "great Australian telco" that is Telstra, because I tend to get all fired up.

Oh, one last thing. They also count uploads. No shit.
 
Reading your e-mail: $5.
Looking at funny GIFS: $8
Pirating music: $30
Watching YouTube: $100

Using the Internet tomorrow...
Too expensive.

There are some things that are WAY overpriced.
Don't even use those things AT ALL.

lol, cell phones. That's why I hate them. I should probably start metering my current bandwidth in anticipation of switching to a cellular network some day...
 
Doesn't the iPhone have an app that does the exact same thing?
 
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