April 2008

These are the words of Webby’s World, and Joe Anderson continues, “The fact you can work in a pub without paying extortionate amounts for WiFi, or on a train or in the Sports Bar at Center Parcs means that time where you would normally be without an internet connection (or an extremely slow phone connection) is now time where you have broadband!”

Joe also enters into the Christian Lindholm ‘carving his dongle’ debate, while explaining the ease of the plug and play nature involved in setting up the modem, suggesting that shaving the edges of the casing is a little extreme, especially considering the dongle comes with a USB extension lead to avoid overcrowding one’s USB ports.

The article, which you can read in full here, finishes with some juicy pricing details, as well as a whole host of possible ways to spend your time online whilst mobile.

This is a question that Chris at Tamebay intends to answer, as indicated by his article ‘An affordable alternative to ASDL?‘

Although the answer will be arriving at a later date, he has prepped his readers with a introductory post on setting up his dongle and carrying out some speed tests. Although a little disappointed to be out of a turbo coverage area he still got speeds of around 565Kpbs, he noted, “In fairness I ran speed tests on my ADSL line and an NTL Cable connection which came out at 400Kpbs and 600Kbps - in comparison the 3 Mobile Broadband stacks up quite well.”

With this in mind he’s turned off the wifi card in his laptop and is going 3 mobile broadband full time, and I’m sure he’ll be relaying how it all pans out.

If you have been following my admittedly sporadic Tweets (we settled for air con on and windows open yesterday, a rather ill-efficient compromise), or indeed read this 3mobilebuzz post about Adam’s dongle, then you’ll have noticed a current of opinion on the word dongle and opportunities for double-entendre.

Well, guilty of perpetuating this is Ant UK at Fresh Plastic, brazenly titling his post, Comparing the size of One’s Dongles. His article does exactly what it’s title promises and suggests that despite their compact nature fitting them side by side, especially on an EEE PC, may be a squeeze.

What do you think? We’ve already had Christian shaving bits off his to get in a MacBook Air.

Improbulus is, I’m guessing, someone who doesn’t do things by half. Posting her first impressions, Improbulus is incredibly comprehensive, covering all that one could expect and more in fine detail.

Moving from ‘what’s in the box’ to ‘follow up post - to follow’ she leaves no dongle-related pebble unturned. Making a notable stop on the return policy disparity between purchasing a dongle in a 3 shop and online, something that has her suggesting buying online is definitely preferable. Doing so gives you 14 days to return the dongle, as opposed to three in store, allowing plenty of time to test the dongle in the areas where you are going to need it.

Including images of the dongle in action with green light aglow, indicating GSM signal only and the more satisfying, blue illumination for HSDPA, Improbulus addresses coverage, taking note of video and turbo areas as indicated by 3’s roll out map. All useful stuff.

Despite the considerable word count of Improbulus’s post there is more to come, which is good news if you are all about thorough road testing, and interested in the implication of 3’s mobile broadband and texting, and the associated tariffs, for not just bloggers but people in general. If you have any thoughts, or a Mac available for her to try the dongle on, then let Improbulus know, she wants to hear from you.

The full article can be found here.

This isn’t whimsical, Christian knows his stuff and his post, The Dongle Revolution is an interesting read for those wanting an opinion on either why and where the mobile sector is going or modifying your dongle.

Firstly I’ll address the modifying, Christian found the fit of the dongle into his MacBook Air a little snug, so decided to shave off some of the casing… coarse, but effective. Less centred on aesthetics are his thoughts on mobile broadband as a concept. Although believing it can’t be seen as a replacement for the fixed alternative, at around 512kbps he is finding it adequate for rich surfing and Skype calls, both valuable commodities while on the move.

After this his article enters an in depth look at tariffs and who is offering what, delivering insights and reflecting on them, such as 430,000 dongles were sold in Sweden during 2007. Something that is surely why the UK market is clamouring for a piece of the action. And as far as 3 goes, Christian believes that the brand has “managed to package up an offer of real value.”

To read it all jump through here.

Monetise This has been testing out the 3 mobile broadband dongle and has found it to make working life considerably more, well, mobile.

Rob’s article for MT covers the installation procedure and the ease with which it is undertaken. Having already been using a HSDPA phone to work whilst out and about he was keen to see how, if at all, the “cool little modem stick” was any easier.

The outcome is yes, Rob was able to get it running in next to no time due to it being “breathtakingly straightforward” and was then browsing, ftp-ing along with utilising Remote Desktop Protocol. This means that mobile broadband allows Rob to “create websites and generally run my business from almost anywhere.” Good news indeed, having found the fixed locations and expense of wifi hotspots limiting, leading him to conclude that “Mobile broadband solutions such as this one really trump wifi hotspots in almost every way.”

He also created a video of the installation process that be viewed here or below, the choice is yours.

Antony Mayfield of Open has put together some thoughts on his dongle experience so far. Part of this was whilst commuting on the Hove to London train line and, despite connection issues during the journey, this has not stopped the self-confessed Curb You Enthusiasm fan thinking that the 3 dongle is pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, good.

His review is long and detailed, covering all aspects of his train ride and the problems encountered. He compares it to his usual dongle from Vodafone, a comparison he continues while talking in more general terms about the advantages the 3 service offers with regard to contract lengths.

Although his review does concentrate on problems that arose it is worth finishing with the introduction to his article for those wanting an quick overview, “This is a long review, but the upshot is: 3 dongle not as good on trains as Vodafone, but 3 = mobile hero and has better contracts.” 3, a mobile hero, sounds good to me.

3 are thanking their followers; those dedicated few that have been there since the start.

It appears that customers who have been with 3 since their launch in March 2003, and have presumably held a contract for the five years since, have been getting a rather pleasant reward for their loyalty. Evidence of such is on show on the SMS Text News site, which has posted the image below of goodies received by 3g.co.uk forum contributor 1000Killahurts.

Red shredded paper, balloons, party blowers, an N95 8GB and a PAYG USB modem? A nice haul in anyone’s book. There seem to be no specific details regarding this initiative, but for more speculation about this act of generosity, jump to 1000Killahurts’ thread at 3G.co.uk here.

Just a quick article to update everyone on Adam’s current dongle activity.

The author of One Man and His Blog has a minor gripe with the dongle software for the Mac - it has no icon. Instead, it defaults to the image for a generic application. This leads Adam to ask why, if you have provided Mac support, not go that little further and provide a pleasing aesthetic touch for the Mac brigade. I think he may have point. However, he does finish his piece in an amusingly self aware state, “I’ve just confirmed every prejudice about Mac users going, haven’t I?”

One of the first posts about the dongle that has not yet been covered on these pages is Simon Wakeman’s extensive introductory post about his inclusion in the trial.

Broken down for easy consumption into the subheadings of ‘Installation’, ‘Speeds’ and ‘Costs’, you can pretty much find all you need to know, especially in the way of speeds and particularly if you happen to be a resident of Whitstable. Simon also unpicks the pricing, making a comparison between landline broadband and its mobile counterpart.

The piece is written in light of how everyday life relies more and more on being connected and that the 3G broadband dongle is a product created for a need. It is this point that Simon finishes on, and although yet to check out the competition, “Having ubiquitous internet connectivity is probably the logical next step for me [and] the 3 dongle looks like a good solution for this…”

The full article is here.

Clearly Stephen Waddington is a man who knows what he wants, beginning his post on installing the dongle with “How often is plug and play actually that?” You know that this is going to be no nonsense.

So it was good to hear that Wadds found the installation a “piece of piss” and even managed to “scoff a sandwich” while his 3G USB modem cranked itself into action. As soon as it was up and running he clocked the speeds at a respectable 1,168 kbps for download an 55 kbps or upload.

Stephen is keen to test the modem against public Wi-Fi networks, so we are looking forward to more down-the-line colloquialisms throughout the trial period.

Adam Tinworth of One Man and His Blog has been reconsidering his attitude toward mobile broadband recently. The reasons why are numbered one to three in his post, so when offered the chance to trial 3’s dongle and mobile broadband service for free, he agreed.

Before relaying the finer points of his experience so far, I feel there is a personal matter that needs mentioning: my use of the word dongle. Adam mentions that “Sam the PR guy from 3 is having far too much innuendo-laden fun with in his e-mail subjects.” Firstly, I’m not sure 3 would include me as part of their PR team; we are only sponsored by the brand, and secondly, avoiding innuendo with a word such as ‘dongle’ isn’t that easy ;-)

Nevertheless such behaviour has not deterred Adam from covering thoroughly his initial experiences with the dongle. The first 24 hours weren’t great, as he struggled to hold a connection, however since then all has gone smoothly. Which has meant he has been “Downloading podcasts: fine. Downloading small software apps: fine. FTP to my blog host? No probs. All good.”

Adam intends to continue with this more of the same throughout the trial and hopefully extend into some rather more demanding situations. Sounds exciting, can’t wait to see his dongle in action…

As promised in his previous post, Richard Brunton has got down to installing his 3 mobile broadband dongle, and detailed the process here.

Discussing the hardware and software thoroughly, the over-riding theme is the simplicity in getting the dongle working. Richard found the most annoying feature was that Vista kept offering to auto run software when the dongle was plugged in - something he got around by making sure the dongle was connected before booting up.

His conclusion concentrates on the ease of installation, “Really it’s just a case of connecting and going for it, and that I did,” which leaves us ready for his next piece. “I have to say that the install was damned easy. Now onto the actual usage.”

Alan at Alan Williamson has continued his trialling of 3 mobile broadband by hooking up in Heathrow’s new luggage black hole - also known as Terminal 5.

Besides writing the post in which he discusses the T5 experience, Alan was able to whizz around the BBC website and checkup on some emails. He did suffer a freeze which timed out some sites, but for the large part his surfing was hassle free. And, on reflection, Alan is enjoying the increased productivity that the dongle provides, able to make the most of time spent travel that would usually slip away.

Added in to this was the ability to enjoy a bit of cue action, which lead to hell of a declaration, “I am watching Live Snooker via the BBC Internet broadcast, beautifully with this dongle. I think I am in love!” We presume this with the dongle and not a bow tie and waistcoat wearing supremo.

Alex Jarvis is preparing for 3 dongle arrival, and it’s due in the nick of time.

As he details in this brief introductory post about the imminent beginning of his trial, he is moving house and the dongle will hopefully be just the trick to avoid prolonged downtime during the transitional period.

We look forward to seeing what he makes of it, more to come.