gonna be working away from home a fair bit and have bought a laptop for those long boring evenings. gonna be sharing a house while im away and mate will also want the same thing.

what will be the cheapest way of accessing the internet? thought about another virgin account just for internet at about £15 per month. but thatll mean being tied up into a years contract i should say, and theres no saying we'll be there a year.

also considered dongles. about £15 for 3Gb usage.

is there a way of running 2 laptops from 1 dongle? or any other way besides wireless router from virgin?

if not then we can both do seperate things, but id still like to know the cheapest way of doing it please.

thanks

Bear in mind, mobile contracts also have a minimum term to run, usually 12 months or more. And the longer you take it out for, the more you get for less money.

You could share a dongle easily but only one at a time.

You *could* daisychain the two devices….might be easy. You would need to connect the two with an ethernet cable, either via a hub or find a crossover cable. Create a network between the two, make the one with the dongle the gateway on the other and then set the one with the dongle up as an internet sharing machine.

Sounds simple enough. Never tried it though. You could also apply variations on this, maybe even wireless between the two. You'd need to know what you were doing though.

If you have two laptops both with wifi, you can set up internet connection sharing over it, like this:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/expert/bowman_02april08.mspx

But it will be a pain.

3g dongles are pretty good, and you can get pay as you go ones nowadays, but be aware that you can't download too much video, so be very certain that your mate is not a big video pirate / bittorrent fiend before you offer to share 3g with him.

Joe

I took my brothers O2 dongle to innerleithen a couple of months ago and it was sooo slow it was unbarable. A simple web page would take a couple of minutes to load. My mates vodafone one was no better. But back home in Manc, they work fine so check out the reception in the area first before you dedicate to any fixed donge contract. (obviously you can get pay and you go too). Might be worth waiting till your there and then see if theres any unsecure networks you can pikey. 😆

That or see if you end up with any sociable neighbours you get freindly with and see if they will share there conection for a contribution to the bill. ❓

*gulp* that all looks a bit beyond me really, just for simple web access :-/

Grimy, thats a great suggestion. why didnt i think of that??? theyre fire brigade houses, so ill ask some of the others how theyre paying for theirs, and see if i can contribute.

thanks 🙂

Have you got a 3g mobile phone? I use my phone as a modem using the supplied Sony Ericson software to surf the net while in work so by passing the work firewall and it works like a dream.

I'm on 3 and have bought an unlimited internet bundle for a £5/month. It's supposed to be unlimited but I do have texts from them now and again saying I've reached the fair usage limit but it would be ok for you for occasional use.

I've also got a 3g dongle that I use too. That's £5/month for 1gig/month.

hmmmm……..mines an LG arena. dunno about 3G and stuff like that. its sposed to be fairly good so id expect it to have 3G.

if the phone is just a modem, do you still buy data packages from orange for instance? and how would you hook the laptop up to your 'modem'?

thanks for that. good suggestion if i can get it to work 🙂 i find that the internet on my phone is pretty crap anyway. slow slow slow, so i bet the laptop would be the same if it worked off that wouldnt it?

This could be the simplest way of doing it….

Three MiFi

3G dongle that produces a Wireless Lan signal, mates got one for working away from home, we've run 3 laptops of it fine, speed it the same as normal USB dongles and the 3 network seems pretty good so far according to him.

zen do monthly broadband contracts if the house has a BT phoneline

+1 for the MiFi that hp_source mentions.

Superb piece of gadgetry!!! £50 and it will come with a 3 PAYG sim and you can top it up as required. Both you and your friend can surf at the same time.

I find 3's network very good, so good I've just canceled my o2 phone contract to move to 3.

Will be too frustrating sharing a dongle but if you do, firstly check that the network has good 3G or 3.5G coverage in that precise area.

If the flat has a phone line why not just get a broadband contract – you get a free wireless router with most of them now. Even if it's £15/month a 1 year contract is £180 between two of you. If you leave the flat say 3 months early you only loose £23 each

vodafone dongles are pay as you go, and unlike all other dongles the credit does not expire

vodafone mobile broadband

select top up and go

netegar Cellular to WiFi router

plug a USB dongle in the back, job done

no battery pack (go figure)
requires a 12v input
• mains adapter
• 12v car adapter
• build a 12v battery pack from 10 AA batteries??

not sure about the phone situation. havent looked into that yet. dont know whether theres a phone line in, or even cable in that area yet. will check that out at weekend.

dougal, you say the credit doesnt expire. does that mean you can have a sort of rolling monthly contract, and after 2 months say, if you only used 1Gb and its 3Gb per month, the next month youd have 8Gb for instance? is vodaphone the only one to do that?

and how do you check on usage? is there some sort of software that logs it for you on the laptop?

cheers

dougal, cant see anything about 12V setup there. where does it say that? no way you can just plug it into mains? :-/

vodafone dongles are pay as you go, and unlike all other dongles the credit does not expire

Did you read the page you linked to? The bit where it says "which lasts for up to 30 days"?

do any of them roll over the data left?

I use my mobile phone (on T-Mobile) as a wireless broadband dongle, it just counts toward my monthly data limit.

• build a 12v battery pack from 10 AA batteries??

That would be a 15v pack?

Anyhow – to the OP. Get a 3G smapartphone, with Wi-Fi, and tether it to your laptop.

This is where your 3G phone acts as a Wi-Fi hotspot for your laptop. Some providers charge extra for this – for example if you have a iPhone it costs – others it's just part of your normal data use, as the provider can't tell the difference. I use a Nokia E71 on O2 with unlimited data.

Simples.

Anyhow – to the OP. Get a 3G smapartphone, with Wi-Fi, and tether it to your laptop.

OP:

what will be the cheapest way of accessing the internet?

ive got an LG arena. wifi and apparently 3G. will that work? is it worth trying to access the net through this and if so how do i do it? tried googling it but no joy. im with orange at the mo, with a small data allowance but i dont mind upping it if this will work fine.

cheers

I asked in phones for u when i got my latest upgrade if i could plug my mobile into my netbook. Im on unlimited data and was told it works which it does, but mobile companies don't like it. He said I may get a letter warning me but I haven't up to now but then I don't abuse it.

Graham

confused about all this and how it works :-/

why would they be pissed off if youre only doing what the phone and netbook are capable of? and how do you do it?

I just plug my nokia n97mini into netbook with nokia lead. The phone software on pc has an option to connect to internet which I do. I think orange would rather sell me a dongle and data package as well.

Graham