5 posts tagged “huawei e169g”

Slightly misleading title as my trial 3 Mobile Broadband dongle hasn't gone back just yet.  However, it will in the next day or two.  Although I never got the thing working with my Eee PC (I used it with a Vista laptop instead) and, even though things weren't always 100% hunky dory, I still decided I needed to look into getting one for myself.

So, tomorrow I should be having delivered a Huawei E220.  I'll be getting up to 5 gig a month for £6.91 and the dongle thrown in.  Looking around, I think that's got to be the best mobile broadband deal in the UK at the moment.  And using 5 gig on mobile broadband can actually be more difficult than you'd imagine (I know from experience!*)

Anyone interested in the deal should check HotUKDeals out.  It's the site where I found this - oh, and by the way, you'll need Quidco.  If you've got a Linux flavoured Eee PC (or perhaps another non-Windows subnotebook) you *have* to go for the E220.  That's the only one that works out-of-the-box.  The direct link to the offer is for a different Huawei dongle but thanks to some resourceful folk on the deal's comments page you'll be able to select the E220 without any problems.

*Keep away from 720p video podcasts on Miro and you'll be fine!

UK mobile operator 3 are looking at spreading the HSDPA (3.5G) love all around your home with a special wireless router.  I like this idea, I like this idea a lot.  Right now I'm on 3's mobile broadband in an abode that doesn't have ADSL or cable.  Only the laptop I'm typing this on can use the connection and that is a bit of a pain.  I've tried setting up an ad-hoc network using the Windows' Vista networking wizard and despite connecting, there's no connection (ie the other devices see this laptop but can't use its connection).

A company called DOVADO advertise a mobile broadband router here and it even supports the E169G that 3mobilebuzz supplied me with.  That's kinda handy as the E169G can't be used on my Eee PC without a lot of hoops to be jumped through (more than this blogger thinks he can manage!)

See also: UK Gadgeteer and Electricpig

Currently trying to upload a quicktime video that's a tad under 50 meg to Vox.  It's taking a while, and I'm in a HSDPA area (in the garden, with me dongle high up in the air and sitting within spitting distance of the network's nearest mast)!

The interesting thing is how much the upload speed affects the download speeds.  I'm currently browsing whilst typing this (I like to multitask and have a wandering mind!) and it's at a complete and utter snail's pace!  It's barely usable.

To be fair, most people, most of the time, don't want to send 50 megs out to the interweb via a mobile connection.  I'm not most people though and I'm giving this mobile broadband a thorough going over!

<Here I'd put a picture if my connection was faster>

Once upon a time there was a third generation mobile phone operator who decided it was a good idea to keep it's customers inside their walled garden.  The garden was small, the customers wanted more.  Little by little the garden grew bigger and the customers got happier.  Eventually the wall toppled over and both customer and operator were very happy.

Enough of the real life fairy tale, back to the issue at hand.

Since Friday I've been (attempting) to use 3's Mobile Broadband (using the trial dongle provided by 3mobilebuzz) and I've only managed to get full internet access on three different occasions - each only for about an hour (give or take).  Other than that I can only access one site... www.three.co.uk !

Any readers got any ideas about these connectivity problems?  I'm using Vista for what it's worth.

Here's two dongles, USB dongles to be a bit more precise.  These dongles are primarily designed for laptops but can be used on desktops too.  The dongle on top is for digital TV, the dongle down below is for mobile broadband.  Because of the size at the sides, trying to insert each into adjacent sockets might be a squeeze (certainly on the Eee PC).

Broadband and digital TV - side-by-side dongle comparison