Posted by: James Wright
on Oct 30, 2009
Just got myself a 3 MiFi unit to replace the older USB 3G dongle I have been using. I am not going to make this a fully fledged review as there are plenty of those available online, but I did just want to say a few words to sum up my initial experience with the unit.
The basics
The MiFi is a rebadged Huawei E5830 3G and wireless access point in one. The unit is charged through the USB mini socket, either with the supplied charger or when connected to a PC (although I understand from reading in a forum that it won’t charge whilst working) – it is also possible to change settings when tethered. Wireless SSID and WEP etc keys can also be changed when connected to a Windows PC (drawback for Linux/Mac(?) users), as can settings related to IP ranges and the like.
On the right of the unit are switches to control on/off, wireless and network connection. Pop a SIM card in and press those buttons in the right order and you are online. On the left is a MicroSD slot, although I have not actually read the manual yet (!?!) I suspect that when connected via USB it can be used as a storage device.
Cost is £69 on a PAYG deal, but ‘as a loyal customer’ I was able to get it for £2/month on top of my existing £5/month plan with a 12 month contract, which I thought was pretty reasonable.
In use
As someone who regularly flits between various operating systems and devices, often when out and about, the appeal of this device is a given. Although I have not used it extensively as yet, I can say that it worked well (or as well as 3UK does) on the train between Norwich and London the other evening, enabling a phone and laptop to share the same connection. Not having remember the 3G settings when installing a new Linux distro will be helpful, and the fact that this device operates in infrastructure mode (as opposed to ad-hoc on JoikuSpot for the Nokia phone) gives a better degree of compatibility with the iPod apparently.
I see a real benefit of technology like this as being when small groups are working together in a remote location and need to share an internet connection. Examples in education could be field trips where learners are out using wifi enabled devices during the day and need to upload files to their learning platform at the end of the day. Lots of devices recording offline geo-tagged video footage with qik.com will inspire some and strike fear into the hearts of others!
Posted by: James Wright
on May 27, 2009
In previous blog entries I have talked about my Nokia E71 purchase, and also my love of travel. As it happens I have not been able to get away since last November, so a trip to Riga last weekend was my first chance to see how this technology works when outside the comfort zone of the home 3G network – an unlimited data plan at home means that rich data applications are not an issue, but the absolutely astronomical data roaming charges are something else.
On the E71 I have installed WeFi, an application that helps piggyback onto open wifi networks by doing the searching and checking on behalf of the user. All of the various S60 applications have WeFi selected as their connection and it sorts the rest. The only real downside is having to manually reconfigure each application to use wifi rather than the default 3G – only a couple of minutes but annoying none the less. Have written to WeFi to suggest that their application could be modified to auto switch between wifi and 3G.
The arrival at Riga airport did not bode well as there was not a wifi connection in sight, but upon checking in at our hotel it seems that despite the poverty and high unemployment, Latvians appear to be generous with their internet connectivity as there were a number of open connections available for me to use. This remained the case whilst walking around the old town and I will able to make use of the Qik video streaming service to record what we were up to and stream it real-time(ish) to the internet. Email worked a treat as did the excellent Gravity native S60 Twitter client.
During the trip I needed to make a couple of calls home and the SIP client on the E71 worked well with Draytel allowing me to save on roaming charges.
I was surprised not to stumble upon any FON presence at all. FON have been pushing their service quite heavily in the UK with a BT tie up and I have previously made use of it when travelling in Spain so I guess I expected a wider European presence.
Without the proliferation of services such as FON and the sharing culture that accompanies them we will not reach the wifi utopia, but things definitely seem to be moving in the right direction.
Posted by: James Wright
on Feb 17, 2009
Recently I have been trawling for info on how to get my VoIP provider – Draytel – to work with with SIP client in the Nokia E71, but complete information doesn’t appear to be readily available. After a bit of trial and error the following seems to have worked.
Go to Tools : Settings : Connection : SIP settings. Create a profile
Profile name: Draytel Service profile: IETF Default access point: (your AP name – Wi-Fi or carrier) Public user name: sip:
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(your Draytel username) Use compression: No Registration: "Always on " Use security: No
Proxy server Proxy server address: sip:nat.draytel.org Realm: draytel.org User name: 8xxxxx (your Draytel username) Password: xxxxx (your Draytel password) Allow loose routing: Yes Transport type: Auto Port: 5065
Registrar server Registrar server address: sip:draytel.org Realm: None User name: 8xxxxx (your Draytel username) Password: xxxxx (your Draytel password) Transport type: Auto Port: 5060
All being well then the E71 should connect to the Draytel server. Under SIP setting the Draytel connection should show a status of Registered.
Now go to Tools : Settings : Connection : Internet Tel. Create a new profile
Name: Draytel SIP profiles: Draytel
Hope this helps
Posted by: James Wright
on Feb 08, 2009
So I decided that Saturday was going to be new phone day as I was 15 months into my contract and 'eligible for an upgrade' (some how that phrase sounds like something from a Reader's Digest mailing telling me that I might have won some money, but I digress...).
I have had an on/off relationship with Nokia since I bought a Cityman 100 back in 1992. Not for any negative reasons but from time to time I have been lured by something new and shiny. Take for example the Siemens S10 (world's first mobile to have a colour screen), Sony Ericsson T68i (this was actually a really good phone) or the Qtek S100 (Windows Mobile seemed like a good idea at the time). The Windows Mobile situation is quite an interesting one. The S100 was a good workable PDA, but the phone interface was slow and buggy so I ended up going back to a Nokia for voice thus defeating the whole purpose of trying to carry only one device.
In advance of this current purchase I had pondered about what I actually want from a phone. At the moment I make a few calls, a bit of messaging, email and listen to some music. A number of people had suggested to me that I get an iPhone. Whilst I don't dislike the iPhone I ruled it out on two accounts;
- Cost. It looked like I would end up paying nearly £100 for the phone, and then pay something like £30 per month. Monthly cost is OK but I didn't want to spend £100 upfront.
- Battery. Friends had suggested that their batteries were already failing and as it is not a user replaceable part that sounds somewhat annoying.
I also quite liked the idea of having a keyboard. Not something brick like - painful memories of trying to fit a Nokia Communicator 9000 into a suit jacket without looking an idiot! Having a Nokia 6120c at the moment also proved important in the decision making process as I have a number of S60 apps that I wanted to use with the new phone, such as Handy Calendar from Epocware, and Twitter client Twim. Nokia's own Mail for Exchange application has worked well for me in terms of syncing with the school Exchange server.
Everything was suggesting the Nokia E71, so on Saturday morning I popped along to the 3 store in Norwich to take a look and see if the small keys would actually suit my fingers - they do. About 5 minutes later I had upgraded for free, got new paperwork and left the store. The tariff will set me back £27 per month including unlimited data and also includes an S60 version Skype (with 3 this will work even when the connection has dropped back to 2G - important for Norfolk).
Posted by: James Wright
on Feb 02, 2009
Just before BETT I downloaded the beta of Windows 7 and had a very brief play with it in virtualised environment. First impressions were very favourable but running a virtual 'test' instance is never going to yield the same kind of results as upgrading the main laptop.
Before I go on to talk about the upgrade process, I should just point out that the machine I was using for the virtual instance was a 4 year old laptop that would not run Vista - so as you can guess I was expecting good things with the upgrade.
On Saturday 17th January I threw caution to the wind and upgraded my main work laptop (Dell D430) to Windows 7. Previously this machine had been running Vista Ultimate and I was reasonably happy with it* and the upgrade process took around 4 hours in total.
Short story - it just worked. I have been using Windows 7 for 2 weeks now, relying on a combination of commercial and FLOSS and so far have found only 2 applications that don't work.
- Raxco PerfectDisk 9 - they have subsequently released version 10 to address the Windows 7 compatibility.
- SIMS .Net - no amount of tweaking the compatibility options seems to be able to get this to work. I will report that to Capita and see what options are available to get it fixed.
Anecdotally the whole system feels faster but I have no specific metrics to back that up. Reliability has been good with only one annoying bug - the Show Desktop Items setting keeps unticking itself :-(
Windows 7 seems to be shaping up to be everything that Vista should have been. Even if you accept that it is not too distant from Vista technically, the public/media perception of Vista has been so poor that something needed to change.
* I have had a love/hate relationship with Vista which has not necessarily been Vista's fault. A few feelings are;
- Some of the early OEM builds were less than reliable in particular when it came to hardware drivers. Not necessarily a problem for me as I always custom build from scratch, but when trying to offer advice to others who had just bought a new machine it was frustrating.
- Service Pack 1 brought a lot of good with it, especially when combined with chipset manufacturers who had pulled their fingers out - things were looking good.
- Functionality such as BitLocker is useful in the corporate environment, especially for those of us who work for government in one form or another and our seeming propensity to mislay data!
