I have an addiction. And the extent of my addiction has recently come to my attention. My name is Jake and I am addicted to the Internet. Whether it’s so that I can blog, or tweet or run my websites, I don’t like to be away from the online world for too long.
To satisfy this unrelenting craving for cyberspace, I decided to invest in a Sony Vaio P Series portable PC. This is a small and easily portable laptop that has built in mobile broadband connectivity. The result would be that I never needed to be offline ever again.
But I never bought it.
Why?
I went to the Sony Centre with my Chinese friend Kelvin so that we could negotiate like chinamen and get the £800 netbook for closer to £500. And there’s no doubt that Kelvin is good at saving money. But in this case it turned out that his approach to saving money was to find an alternative route to the same functionality.
What I ended up with was a 3 portable modem with MiFi. This is a small device about the size of a small mobile phone which can connect to the Internet much like a mobile dongle. But the difference is there are no wires. It promises to create a miniature wireless network that several netbooks, or iTouches can connect to at the same time. But does it work?
The Good Points
Having been using it now for almost a month, I’m actually quite impressed with it. In contrast with many other devices that promise convenient and magical solutions for low prices, this one actually does work!
Once you switch it on, you can connect wirelessly in seconds from your netbook, laptop or iTouch. The MiFi network can be security enabled if you like, so that nobody else can use up your bandwidth.
Connection speed is remeniscent of the kind of service I used to get on dial up 10 years ago, but considering that web pages have become larger in file sizes over the past 10 years, it’s probably much faster than 56kbps. You’re not going to be able to download large files with it, but I don’t think anybody would expect you to be able to. For recieving email, viewing web pages and doing general online stuff, it’s more than adequate. I can even edit web pages and use FTP. So no complaints at all about the device and the service it provides. It does deliver 100% on its promise of connecting me to the Internet at workable speed from anywhere.
The Bad Points
My only complaint would be the way it is priced. While I understand and appreciate that 3 has to make a profit somehow, their pricing structure for top ups is somewhat aggressive. The 1GB top up for £10 is not a bad price, because 1GB online, if you’re not downloading anything large, can last quite some time. But the catch is that all top ups are time sensitive. That is, you have 30 days to use it up or it expires anyway, forcing you to top up again.
