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Mobile Wi-Fi Hot Spot

Posted by kdawson on from the boy-in-a-bubble dept.

bsharma writes to let us know about a little goodie that we will be able to buy starting May 17: a battery-powered, rechargeable, cellular, Wi-Fi hot spot that you can put in your pocket. "What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go? Incredibly, there is such a thing. It's the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It's a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card. It has one power button, one status light and a swappable battery that looks like the one in a cellphone. When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot. ... If you just want to do e-mail and the Web, you pay $40 a month for the service (250 megabytes of data transfer, 10 cents a megabyte above that). If you watch videos and shuttle a lot of big files, opt for the $60 plan (5 gigabytes). And if you don't travel incessantly, the best deal may be the one-day pass: $15 for 24 hours, only when you need it. In that case, the MiFi itself costs $270." The device has its Wi-Fi password printed on the bottom, so you can invite someone to join your network simply by showing it to them.

5 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Singularity use? by Sybert42 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Most Singularity-research should be done on high-speed landlines. Also, the iPhone can do this. The iPhone will seem silly post-Singularity.

  2. Wait for Singularity by Sybert42 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Data will be better understood then, and better handled. You can try to use VOIP whenever you have IP, but latency or other problems may arise. Bandwidth is just one variable.

  3. Airport Express? by v1 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Obviously not useful to relay cell phone to wifi but a good thing to carry in the laptop bag. Not much larger than a power adapter, you plug it directly into the wall and run a line to the ethernet and it gives wifi. Also has a printer and a stereo port but probably not useful in this case. Heck of a lot cheaper than the MiFi too, $99

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
  4. Bullets after the Singularity. by Sybert42 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Probably won't be as useful. Intelligence will have to find its way into even projectiles.

  5. Re:"simply by showing it to them" by ifeelswine · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    And what do you do when you no longer want to let them have access?

    modify your dns to redirect all of their web requests to goatse