Now the British Summer has officially arrived (I had my first BBQ of the year on Saturday, so it must be true) we need to take advantage of the sun while we can, as it’ll probably start raining before the end of the month and then, bar a few nice days in August, Summer will be over with. Therefore, we’re in complete agreement with Ewan at SMS Text News, who reports that Thursday 15th May is National ‘Work From Home’ day and suggests that everyone uses their mobile broadband dongle from the comfort of the back garden. Not sure if you should stay away from the office for the day? “…Tell’em I said it was fine and it’s part of an international mobile working study you’re doing for SMS Text News…” Thanks Ewan, I’ll try it myself. Anyone else?

Neville’s not the only blogger who’s been away, Adam from ah ok lah has taken his family down to Hayle in Cornwall, and though it took him a little longer than expected to arrive at his destination, he’s been making the most of the time he’s got there. Saturday was overcast for most of the day, though that didn’t stop Adam introducing his son to the sea for the first time! Adam also took his dongle with him and has been able to blog while away, upload pictures and surf the net, finding that “the surfing speeds are quite satisfactory”. He also finds that “Having a connection to the net has proven invaluable while checking for tourist attractions nearby”, which is great news for those who like to keep connected to the net wherever you are.

Communicator, blogger, podcaster and Second Life explorer Neville Hobson has recently been to Dublin to attend the PRII conference and to speak about PR and social media, and according to the man himself “It was a terrific event”. Staying in a “guesthouse-type hotel” he found the free Wi-Fi signal didn’t quite encompass the bedroom area, thus further use of the 3 mobile broadband dongle enabled Neville to keep on top of his work. Head over to Neville’s website to read the full account of his “wholly enjoyable” Dublin trip.

Readers of Italy magazine forum (the forum for those who love everything Italian) may recently have been interested to read a post by Pigro who, in a random act of kindness, has posted details on 3’s mobile broadband pricing plan for anyone planning on taking a trip to The Boot. After a bullet pointed drill down, Pigro suggests using the coverage checker to ensure that the area you plan to visit is covered and suggests that the 1GB allowance for £10 should be “quite sufficient for a months general purpose web use” as long as you don’t download or stream too much.

After recommending topping up with data bundles to ensure you don’t get charged for going over your allowance he concludes “All in all, it’s a fantastic package for me” and also reports that existing 3 customers can get a free modem with a 50% reduction on any of the 3 monthly bundles. To read the whole post, head on over to Italy magazine forums.

John at Business Opportunities and Ideas has been getting to grips with his dongle and decided it is “brilliant”.

Detailing how to set up the dongle on Windows Vista, John states that he doesn’t like lugging about a windows-based laptop so with the help of Dale Lane, set the dongle up on his Asus EEE PC. This done, he looks at the dongle from a business perspective, saying: “It means you can work almost anywhere without having to worry about the availability, security or price of wifi hotspots.” And adds to this that as a back up for the office broadband, it is excellent should there be an outage from your regular connection.

All that’s left is his enthusiastic and positive conclusion, which you’ll find here.

Birmingham based blogger Peter C Ashton has recently taken delivery of a trial dongle and has posted a lengthy article on his first experiences using it. One of Peter’s main concerns of mobile internet usage is the lack of free wi-fi access, so he was hoping the 3 dongle would circumvent this problem, and it seems to have done so. Though he was “very skeptical about allowing mobile phone companies to control the last mile of mobile internet” he has found the 3G service from 3 is “not bad at all”.

Though Peter was initially concerned about using the dongle with his MacBook, it turned out that “There are a few niggles but on the whole it just works”. He does have a couple of issues, such as not being able to see a list of available networks or the signal strength and the uploading/downloading speed, but on the whole Peter got on well with the dongle, concluding “until we have a true city-wide free wifi mesh then the 3g dongle is, if not essential then very useful for the laptop swinging digital nomad”. Jump on over to Peter’s blog to read the full story.

Manchester’s Mantex has been playing with his trial dongle and has found it to be very handy indeed. The idea of USB modems certainly appeal to him; “No need for a wireless hub - and you don’t need to be near a hotspot” to get online.

He reports that the software needed installed very quickly from the dongle “without a single hitch”, and he was able to connect immediately to the internet. Mantex also briefly mentions the price plans and how the 3 dongle comes free when you take out a contract with 3. There is promise of further reporting to come as he intends to try it in his car to see how well the connection lasts while traveling around the M60, “Manchester’s answer to the Boulevard Periferique”. Good travelling sir, we look forward to your verdict.

Mr Stefan Töpfer recently wrote up some initial impressions on using his trial dongle, which came just in time as he says he was planning on changing his mobile broadband provider. Stefan is effusive in his praise, reporting “I have to say I’m pleased, very pleased with the performance of this little unit and for once feel always connected to the Internet.” He also thinks that anyone who works in a mobile capacity should own a dongle as it improves productivity in several ways, such as making your business more accessible to customers and enabling you to spend more time working from home instead of being stuck in the office all hours.

Head on over for the full story and to see why Stefan will be taking out a subscription once his free trial has ended.

It wasn’t an easy beginning for the working relationship between Joel Cere and 3 Mobile Broadband, what with a faulty SIM and slow speeds. However, as his post ‘Affordable Mobile Broadband on the go with 3‘ illustrates, with these issues out of the way (thanks in part to “professional and courteous” types at a 3 call centre), things are looking good.

After highlighting the seemingly rising cost of wifi access, Joel suggests that “If you are a business nomad, you would want to consider Three’s mobile broadband offer.” Detailing the easy Mac setup, Joel was online before he knew it and able to surf and check email. We await his next test, something he refers to as a clincher; the Skype Video call. As for now though, we can all feel extremely envious as he heads into the sun-drenched land know as outdoors for a spot of alfresco blogging!

Rick Hurst has “finally succumbed” to 3 mobile broadband in its PAYG format.

His description suggests that 3 mobile broadband is a sort of evil temptress that he could no longer resist, but in fairness to Rick, he did resist until the dongle price had dropped, from £99 to £50. Anyway, dongle in hand he is now happy enough, having tried it out in a couple of locations. He was, however, almost undone by the fact that the installation software is contained within the dongle itself and not on, what he presumed was a missing, installation CD.

Ending his article with the intent to continue relaying his experiences, we’ll be sure to keep an eye on his blog activity.

It is a philosophy that has given birth to the perpetual sale, an all year round season after season reduction on anything from under-crackers to widescreen TV’s. And this is only the tip of the bargain iceberg, with one-off offers and for a limited time only whetting the appetite of the spend shy consumer.

If this intro has hastened your heartbeat then you should definitely jump over to TechRadar and investigate the article ‘You can still get a free laptop!‘ Detailed in there is the 3 mobile broadband offer that will get you internetting all over the proverbial shop on an Acer Aspire 5315 for £35 per month.

Interested? Then be aware that the deal is only available through Carphone Warehouse and PCWorld and on the 3 Plus Broadband, hence the £35 per month, for the specifics click here.

Matt at Gadget Venue has written a piece on the recent price slashes on Pay As You Go mobile Dongles, where you’ll find that “you can now pick up the PAYG green, black ZTE and Hiawei E220 dongles for £49.99.” As we’ve previously mentioned, this is the much hallowed half price deal and the news is already spreading around the blogosphere, creating joy for all those who read of it, including ‘EJR’ who read the news over at Chris Oldroy’s blog.

Matt has some advice for those pondering on which deal to go for: “My recommendation is to go for a PAYG version so that if you are not going to use it 1 month then you can just not bother paying up.” He continues, strongly suggesting that readers pick one up if they are keen mobile internet browsers, and finishes by stating “They are well worth the money!”

Dale Lane loves his Eee PC, but has previously found it’s not always possible to get online whereever he is. However, now he has a trial 3 mobile broadband Dongle, that’s all changed; after previously fixing his Eee PC so it would work with the Dongle, he’s found that the sky’s the limit! “Plug it in, wait a few seconds, and it’s online. Internet access anywhere, anytime. Proper Internet. That is a very cool thing” is what he says, and it sounds good to me. Though he’d rather not download all the software that the Dongle requires, he realizes he may be a bit different to a normal user as “I’m not paying for this data. If I was paying by the MB, perhaps I’d be more appreciative of an application that let me monitor my data usage?”

Dale also drills down in to the different price plans for the Dongle, mentioning how you can buy allowances of 1GB, 3GB or 7GB of data per month on contract or PAYG. For the full, in-depth article head over to Dale’s blog.

Richard Brunton has recently written a piece on his trial Dongle and seems to be having a ball with it so far! Setting the Dongle up was “one of the easiest installations of hardware I’ve ever accomplished”, then Richard was ready to test it out on his travels. Though he mentions one small issue of the Dongle trying to re-install the software sometimes, everything else seems great: he finds the connection is very quick to establish, and also writes “Interestingly the connection is more reliable than my home based O2 Broadband which disconnects and reconnects a few times per hour!”

For the full story head over to Richard’s blog, where you’ll find tales of Paisley weddings, trips to Dublin and Horror film festival ‘Dead by Dawn’.

Forums are ideal for sharing problems with others, and ‘robt’ over on moneysavingexpert.com has been sharing his issues with all willing to listen. You see, his Nokia E65 on 3, which he uses as a modem with Nokia PC Suite, is apparently fine for downloading, but slow in browsing – and thus “If [he] was to purchase a USB broadband dongle (from 3), would [he] get identical results, or is PC Suite, or the phone, limiting my connection somehow”.

Well – the answer, from ‘islandman’ at least, seems to be particularly positive – with the helpful forum contributor going to some length to allay rob’s fears, and heap the 3 dongle with praise galore. “I recently queried how hundreds of people who live on a static caravan holiday park each have internet with no landlines” he begins, and quickly goes on to reveal the answer: “it seems the majority of them have these 3 dongles”.

Good news indeed, and coupled with the fact that “there is no noticeable slowness of speed from a PC, other than if everyone surfs at the same moment” it sounds like for those folk at least, that the 3 dongle has become an internet way of life. He finishes up… “Apparently if you do a lot of heavy downloading, you run the risk of using up your allocated allowance, but THEY tell me it hasn’t happened to any of them. Oh, and it is £5 per month now”.

Cheers islandman!