8 posts tagged “usb dongle”

Yes I was that bored!  Yes it was silly.  Yes I ran out of DSes and dongles...

The picture above shows (a rather grainy) image of a 'One For All' AV sender.  The SCART plug (for those of you outside of Europe, it's the part with silver pins) simply fits into the back of a TV and the rest of the device bends up until vertical.

In my opinion this is how USB 'dongles' should be made.  It makes far more sense than jutting out to the side and needn't get in the way of typing.  I'd imagine if done right, it'd be less prone to accidents than one that sticks out to the side.  With a hinge (like on the One For All above) it could still be used horizontal if need be.

Previously on Fresh Plastic... Anthony had an Eee PC 701, a USB digital TV receiver and posted an article showing the two working together.  Meanwhile the Eee PC decided to split, the USB dongle lay dorment and ultra tiny laptop TV seemed a long forgotten memory.

Well, those days are long gone and I now have an Eee PC 900 and she ain't going anywhere (fingers crossed).  She has a much bigger screen but housed in almost the same sized case (although she's a tad bit heavier, psst - don't tell her that!)  So I introduced her to the digital TV dongle and, after a lot of matchmaking, they got it together!

Getting them working together really was a hard task.  ASUS has made it even more difficult than before.  A lot of head scratching, a lot of Googling, a lot of reading and re-reading of the forum posts on eeeuser.com and a hell of a lot of trial and error.  Got there in the end though - check out the pics below...

I've been using 3's Mobile Broadband extensively since Saturday.  As a trialist I can use it as much as I want, it's truly unlimited!  In the real world, 3 offer packages of 1GB, 3GB and 7GB (Lite, Plus and Max respectively) - unlike their handset-only offerings such as X-Series, there isn't the option of unlimited ("fair use" or otherwise).

I've taken advantage of the unlimited-ness to download a whole bunch of videos using Miro.  So much so, that I'd have easily used up all of the 'Plus' allowance in one day!  Not something I'd recommend paying customers do.

The fact that I can so easily download that much over the mobile network in a matter of hours is kind of amazing considering what speeds were like just a couple of years ago.  Even though I can't get the the 2.8 Mbps speed that the service goes up to in Turbo coverage areas, I'm still getting speeds comparable to what a BT landline offers in this area.  And as this neighbourhood doesn't have cable, it's a welcome choice over ADSL.

As I had Miro downloading videos constantly and consistantly for a couple of hours, I was able to see where best to site the laptop and sit, myself.  The garden turned out to be the best place - but it didn't improve speeds as much as you'd imagine.  Taking the USB modem out of the port, Blu-Tacking ('Blu-Hack') it to the top of the laptops screen and connecting it back up via the supplied USB extension cable - is by far the easiest and most effective way to boost your broadband.  This worked better than the 'garden' method on it's own.  Even the 'upstairs room facing 3's nearest mast' method (which incidently is very, very near*) isn't good enough on it's own.

*Thanks to OFCOM's Sitefinder (it's useful but rubbishly implemented!)

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>

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).

Looks like a lot of activity today over at the ALL NEW 3mobilebuzz.  It's not just the 3Skypephone any more.  So, what are they now focusing on?  Read the title!! Geez...

Yes, they're taking a look at 3's mobile broadband offering and handing out USB "3.5G" dongles left, right and center*!  Where's my one chaps?  Oh wait, I no longer have a laptop!  D'oh!  Having said that my nephew is going into hospital on Monday and he not only has a laptop, he's going to a hospital that has a very sensible policy regarding wireless devices (they allow them to be used!)  So, what do you say guys?  Want to cure a ten-year-old (and his uncle) of boredom?  He's a blogger too!

Failing that we'll be using a Skypephone for tethered access at slightly less than 3.5G

*sorry, couldn't resist, there's more North Americans reading this blog than Brits at the moment!