For several reasons (mostly that I'm possibly going to be spending a bit of time in hospital in the coming months) I'm considering mobile internet for the laptop. I'm not sure of how good value mobile internet on a PAYG is, indeed is it good value at all? Usage away from home would be just idle internet surfing and forum/Facebook use, so I couldn't see me needing a big data allowance.

Suggestions/advice anyone?

The big question is can you safely use a mobile phone on the ward, as that is what mobile broadband is.

I have a 3 contract mbb dongle at it does as it says on the tin.
My daughter who lives with the ex has a PAYG one on 3 and she is on it ALL the time, only uses about £15 a month for general web surfing, any major downloading is done on my Virgin home connection (20mb)

Would likely be using it off the ward, but the issue with phones & hospitals is very overplayed – the hospital in question doesn't have a problem with mobiles anyway, those hospitals that do are often those with the extortionate "patient line" type contracts anyway. robably more likely to use it on the outpatient visits TBH.

£15 a month isn't bad, is it?

just disable automatic updates on your lappy or you'll could be wasting the comparatively expensive bandwidth. I've got a vodafone 3g dongle and it works pretty well. There's a little app which tells you how much you've got left and so on

i am using a three dongle and have no problems with it, not as fast as the home network, standard "upto" 8mb, (no idea how fast it actually is). Only thing i would raise is whether there would be coverage where you need it to work, think of all the network problems with a mobile and the same will apply.