Moving house (hopefully) v.soon and may well have a period of time without a broadband supply (I am getting palipations at the very thought already never mind the stress of moving house!) so am wondering how these USB dongle things work? Anyone got any links or advice? Are they reliable?

If I do this I can't imagine I'd need to use it for any longer than a month to be honest so PAYG would be the way to go surely?

As always, thanks in advance for any intel. Cheers.

Err…don't understand the question – can you point me at a url ?

Edit: Ah – mobile phone provider thing, I see…

My brother had a 3 one and didn't seem to have any problems with it. They offered him lower price and higher download limit when he asked to cancel, so it might be worth pretending you're going to cancel to get the best value for money 😛

yep they are good, and your right payg is certainly the way to go for that short time. alot of the guys i know use it as their only internet. Your best getting whichever one gives you the best signal in the area (check with a 3G phone if possible). if theyre pretty much the same then vodafone is good because the credit doesnt expire so you can keep it and carry on using the credit when your on holiday etc in the future.

oh also, if you cant check with a phone, go buy one, plug it all in turn it on and your will be able to get to the providers website to top up, so if that works top it up, if it doesnt take it back, dont buy the topup before you know you can get signal where you are, you wont get a refund on top up, but on the device you will.

There are 2 options.
Buy a USB dongle from whichever mobile phone network will give the best coverage in your new house. They come with a sim card just the same as a mobile phone & are generally reliable as long as you've got network coverage, but they only work in the machine they're plugged into.

The other option is to get a MiFi from "Three" network. This also uses (their) mobile phone network to give you internet access as the dongles do – but it also acts as a wireless router for up to 5 devices at the same time. They're ~£50 and a £15 PAYG top-up gives you 15GB limit – plenty! I'm impressed with them, enough to consider ditching my landline & regular broadband…

Good advice I reckon, thanks for all that. I've been a little put off by the apparently poor reviews on Amazon which, in the absence of any other intel, I am bound to take seriously!

Cheers, any more? Any other recs? Don't reckon I need any router stuff, one PC at a time will suffice for a short time.

they work on the same network as your mobile phone so signal is dependent on what network is covered in the area you are moving to. The dongles themselves don't have the best aerial in the world so signal strength is reduced further by this fact. another option you might want to consider is upping you phone contract to include internet browsing in your package (assuming you have a pay monthly contract) then you can use the phone as a modem. the advantage of this is a much improved signal reception. I have reverted to doing this now as I was sick of losing signal when I had signal on my phone (dongle came with the phone package i got for work).

Non technical explanation by a non computer expert

Bought a 3 mobile dongle thingy, 5 giga bytes for £15, plugged it into my laptop, it installed some software. Needed to reboot then on to normal internet use.

very similar to using my HTC desire – sometimes the signal is great, other times a bit slow, trains journeys are quite poor between cities/large towns

badly, like dial up internet connection, but slower

Used 02 for a few months while we were renting. Dongle was £10 half price and we've been using the £15 pm PAYG top up. Speed was fine for general surfing.

don't go over the prescribed data ie: if you have the 30 day contract setup which means you can cancel at any time by giving 30 days notice ( no long term contract ) when you go over the agreed amount of data eg: 5gb p/m for £15 p/m the charges become extortionate 10p per mb which works out at £100 per gigabyte! and don't believe the postcode check that shows signal strength in your area find out from someone in your area with tha same provider for an accurate strength.