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Mobile Wi-Fi Hot Spot
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.
One Advantage of the MiFi unit is that the performance is better than that of a standard datacard. Laptop Noise is an issue with usb sticks especially in low coverage areas.
Disclaimer: I work for the Manufacturer.
And what do you do when you no longer want to let them have access?
Someone forgot about the battery powered Cradelpoint systems. They're at http://www.cradlepoint.com/ and aren't tied to one system or another: You provide a USB dongle for it. It provides everything else. The PRS300 or the CTR350 has been around for years now.
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Just what I've always wanted, a mobile wi-fi hotspot sitting in my pants pocket microwaving my genitals all day long.
I don't see the big deal in this. For those of us who run Symbian based phones, Joikuspot has a free version which allows you to use your phone as a personal wifi hotspot with encryption. I use my E71 on ATT for an instant 3G hotspot wherever a 3G connection exists.
I've been doing this for months. http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/
Yeah, I don't get how these highly-metered services even exist -- especially on "landline broadband". Even in mobile broadband, it's nowhere near justifiable, methinks. Anyone who pays $40 for half a CD per month of data transfer in 2009 is batshit insane. That probably wouldn't even cover the spam I get.
I am not actually an RF engineer so my thoughts/explanation may be completely ludicrous(it would not be the first time). My expertise is basically layer 3 through 5 of the OSI model
During the system test phase, a large number of measurements were performed to isolate the impact of Wifi Noise on 3G and 3G Noise on WiFi. It was found that there was actually minimal impact of Wifi on 3G and vice versa.
So, how well does your iPhone share out that connection to a real computer (you know, what the whole point of this little device is)? Oh wait, Apple doesn't allow tethering apps? Hmm, sorry, I think you don't quite get it. There are LOTS of Internet-capable handheld devices out there (some much more-so than the iPhone, thanks to having Flash and the option to install your own browser/mail client/whatever). The iPhone is a neat device, but until you can link it with a PC and share the wide-area connection (without jailbreaking, that is), it won't do what people buy these things for.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Good point - and I too "have one and it's called an iPhone".
What I think this really means is that Apple can do what it's done repeatedly this decade: Create something versatile and potentially disruptive, but hold off on the disruption as long as is profitable.
F'rinstance: Everyone else sold MP3-based music players with no DRM. Apple made an iPod that could play DRM-free music - but, instead, they turned around and partnered with every major music label to provide a locked-down but fully-stocked catalog. Gah! Where's my free music?
In retrospect, it was pretty damned smart. Guess what they could do just as soon as "pent-up consumer demand profit" became greater than "become best buds with the RIAA profit"? Remove all the DRM.
They did it again with the iPhone App store. Every other smartphone allowed independent development, but Apple told us we'd get nothing but WebKit-based apps, and we'd like it. Meanwhile, that let them ship the first iPhone without worrying about the public API - and create visible, vocal demand from the development community. By the following year, programmers everywhere were screaming: "Please! Let us write programs for your platform!" And what do you know... the App Store appeared, and Apple gets a cut.
I don't know if it was truly planned this way, but it does seem to be a pattern, doesn't it? Most companies either court the rebellious-hacker base with an open API (early TiVo, some Google, Twitter), hoping to Be The Platform, or build a fortress (late TiVo, Facebook), hoping to Be The Gatekeeper. Apple seems to have a knack for being the gatekeeper as long as it possibly can - and then amazing us with the new power of the platform.
The jailbroken apps, as well as the 3.0 betas, prove that Apple could offer iPhone tethering next week - or next year. But they'd have to annoy AT&T to do it, and probably renegotiate. Why do that before they have to?
My hope: The MeFi will be a huge success, and there will be clamoring for Apple to offer something nearly as good. And then, one day, they'll send out a firmware update... and behold: the iPhone tethers. "It's amazing. I'm really proud of this capability, which is the first in a capacitive-touchscreen smartphone." etc.
"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."
Yeah, it's called a phone!
If you have a Windows Mobile phone with an internet plan, you could use WMWifiRouter(the most advanced of the pack), which has been available since 2007, and was the very first app to do this.
If you have a Symbian phone, you could use JoikuSpot, which has been available since 2008.
To continue, for iPhone you could use PDANet. For Android there are also several programs available as well!
Why would you use something like this and get another data subscription when all you need is already in your pocket? Aside from the internet plan which you are likely to have already, all of these software are available for a small one-time fee - likely lower than one month of the data package itself.
Funny thing, none of those apps ever made it out of the firehose when I posted them. What makes this (very expensive and limited) product so special?
I have checked out every last cell phone carrier's data plan, this one is no exception. You agree that the first 5 GB of data download costs you $60. The second 5 GB of download for that month cost in excess of $1,200. Only a fool would sign a contract that has no upper limit to how much it can cost you. If you sign such a contract then don't go bitching to the carrier when you get your first multi-thousand dollar bill.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.