3g dongle or bluetooth and 3g mobile?

Pats shiny new Asus eee-PC 900 20GB...

So bluetooth to mobile or splash out on dongle? What say the FOAK?

 

I've been using a Bluetooth dongle and phone for a while with my Eee
now. But XP's Bluetooth support is shite - and it was 'only' 3G anyway.

I bought a T-Mobile 3.5G Dongle this week, stuck my SIM card in it and
got speeds close to my home broadband from it.

If you already have a contract that gives you 'unlimited' data, then
buying a PAYG dongle is a very good idea as they're so cheap at the
moment.

 

This is the Linux one Eee - not XP. So Btooth may be a little better.

Doesn't it mean I can't use the phone at the same time? Don't want to
open and close the phone 20 times a day!

 

Well, there is that.

You could take out a new data-only contract (Around 15 quid a month) or
do it as PAYG (4 quid a day).

Of course, if you have a phone that supports 3.5G / HSDPA and Bluetooth
works fine with Linux, then you don't really need a dongle.

 

Well - using the 3G phone as a modem seems OK... I'll see if I feel the
same after a week or two.

 

You could get a phone that supports HSDPA and use that? It's what I do
and works well.

 

Currently sitting in a caravan (ong story about working away from home
and being too tight to pay for a hotel every night for a year) and it
s working a treat via buetooth to Nokia 6500-Slide.

Not blindingly fast, it has to be said, but adequate for a bit of Usenet
and email.

 

Can't you use a data cable? I've got the N95 and I get about 3Mb/s
using a USB cable. I do have to tunnel all my traffic because T-Mobile
like to run JPEG re-compression, but that's just a case of running
privoxy on one of my boxes on the net and using an ssh tunnel to get to
it. I even run sipproxyd so that I can make VOIP calls and use the data
connection to make free phone calls.

 

I could use a data cable, but for Usenet and Email Bluetooth is fine.
I'm getting just over 500k/s speeds - so acceptable for this use.

I have tunnelled into home server and that works OK - purely as an
experiment so far - I've got everything I need at the moment on the eee pc.

 

That's pretty damn good.

I want to get me one of them

 

It's fairly marvelous really. Took a bit of tweaking of the TCP
settings to get there though. The defaults only achieved about 200kb/s.

Also helps that I am in the middle of nowhere, but with a fairly local 3
mast - so good strong signal and next to no contention with anyone else.

They are very good - don't go mad and get the XP one though. They only
have a 12gig drive and XP is slower than the linux installed one. With
a bit of tweaking there is nothing you can't do with the linux one
(apart from run office 2007)...

 

Maybe if you 'know' Linux you can but I can't (and I've tried many
times over the years). :-(

We bought the 4G eeePC a few months ago and ran it with the stock
Linux for a week. I got fed up not being able to do all the things I'm
used to with XP so installed XP on it. Everything worked perfectly
[1] but the startup especially was just a bit too slow to make full
use of the little PC's full 'portability'.

So, I put the stock Linux back on it and it's now mainly used by our
daughter for IM (she misses MSN Messenger but put's up with Pidgin),
accessing her Hot and other mail and the web in general. She transfers
anything she needs printing to this PC as I have not been able to get
*any* Linux (or OSX) to print to either the shared Canon ip4000 on
this PC or ip5200r network printer (OSX prints to that ok).

All the best ..

T i m

[1] In fact the touchpad works much better under XP for some reason
(more sensitive, we generally use the (stiff?) mouse buttons now under
Linux because the touch pad isn't sensitive enough for reliable double
tapping) and the WiFi is less 'automatic' under Linux (the abiliy to
just connect be you hard wired or near any AP). And remote printing
works perfectly under XP.

 

I'm no Linux guru - far from it - I run Ubuntu on the desktop at home
(and have done for about 3 months) and now have Xandros (the default) on
the eee.

The only thing I've had a problem with running is TomTom Home! I've got
round that the easy way by just using the media centre PC for that
instead of fighting with Ubuntu to make it run. Most other apps either
run under wine or have a linux equivalent (often it's easy to find
something better, that is free, than the paid for commercial software for
windows.

I've installed XP onto an SD card and tried it - it ran slower (as well
as booting slower - but some of that could have been down to the access
speed of the SD Card I suppose) and used up all the ram very quickly.

Not had a problem setting up networked printers - here it prints to an HP
Laserjet 6 (Laser printer) which is on the network connected to a
jetdirect, to an HP D6160 - shared from the linux desktop and to a Canon
9200ip - again directly networked.

Just told it to look for network printers, gave it the domain name and it
found them.

I think touchpads are down to the user a bit - either you get on this
them or you don't. I've actually reduced the sensitivity of the one on
the eee (there is an application in settings to change the sensitivity
and speed of double tapping etc) as it was a bit more sensitive than I
liked. Horses for courses.

Dunno - if I wander into range of an AP and it's not already connected to
one, it just pops up a balloon and asks me if I want it... Worked fine
parked outside McDonalds the other night when I was in Devon and wanted a
150MB download and didn't feel like doing it over the mobile phone!

I think the thing to remember is that most of us have become very used to
Windows over the years. Linux, with a GUI desktop, is similar in use.
But it's not the same! There is always a little to learn and become
familiar with. I like that - I like to learn new things, and I have to
say that after using 64bit Vista on this PC at home for a while, Ubuntu
(also 64 bit version) was a revelation in speed and ease of use.

The important thing is to go into using it knowing that there is a
learning curve. I do feel that for Internet use (and file handling)
Linux has Windows beat hands down. Where is looses out is in the area of
some specialist programs that have been developed for Windows (or Mac)
over a long period and wont run under linux - the only one I miss is
Adobe Photoshop CS3 - as yet it wont work under WINE and Gimp, while very
good isn't AS good.

 

I have tried many distros over the years (including one on an AX.25
node that I downloaded onto 4 floppies over Packet radio) but *none*
(so far) have even *worked* entirely. Like, I can't run the LiveCD
(Toshiba A60) or the sound, video or WiFi won't work or work properly.
In many cases I'm sure it's me, often not being able to open and read
the 'man' pages (can't find them or don't know how to) doesn't help
and / or not actually being able to apply the app / fix to make it
work (often because either the fix or app is for a different 'version'
of Linux and I still have no idea what fits what there).

Understood. I have found some Linux apps where I've thought it was
nice or good but in the main I'm too used to the Windows versions to
battle with the Mac / Linux versions long enough to feel comfortable.
I have 3 Garmin GPS and am used to Mapsource. It suits my needs and
works. I've even got a copy on my little Libretto 70CT under ME. ;-)

I believe that doesn't help Simes.

I upgraded the RAM from 512 to 2G and that seemed to help a bit.

Hmm, ok well I *can* print from the eeePC to this XP shared ip4000 but
the image comes out 1/3 size. I've played with the setting and
installed the Gutten<whatever> drivers and from what I've read from
others, Canon aren't very good at supporting Linux (or OSX, just my
luck). However, I'm not about to dump a fast, quiet, cheap to run
duplex inkjet that the 5 PC's here can print to perfectly well simply
because Linux (and OSX) can't (or because I can't make it work most
likely) :-(

Like I said, it does actually *print* but not properly. Not tried any
of the fancy stuff like CD printing either!

Maybe. I have several on various makes and model of laptop and get on
with them very well (and can't understand why people often revert to
plugging in a mouse, even for basic stuff?) but there really was a
noticeable difference on this eeePC between Linux > XP > Linux again.
Both my daughter and I used it in XP for some time and had no problems
double tapping (not hitting) the touchpad to get things going. Now
back on Linux and even with the pad set to the most sensitive in the
perfs, she just uses the (klunky) mouse button as a more predictable
alternative.

Hmmm ...

Quite possibly, other than we can compare the eeePC to the Dell
Inspiron 8100 and Tosh Sat Pro A60 with the eeePC running XP they all
feel the same (and we always use double tap to select stuff).

;-) Ok, in XP you make a WiFi connection and it just remembers it.
When it's within range it connects. With this Linux our daughter has
had to give me the eeePC back a few times because it 'won't connect'
yet she never did under XP (and we have two AP's here to choose from).
Again, I'm not sure I fully understand the rules with some of it, one
connection 'depending on' the status of another (well I can but it
doesn't seem to work the way I understood).

LOL. Well, in every case so far I have managed to get it to connect,
it's just taken more effort than I suppose I'm used to.

Agreed. I have Gutsy Gibbon on a caddy drive on the Tosh and it works
'ok' (as in it functions and I can find my way round it ... I can't
get any PCMCIA WiFi cards to work but that's another matter).

Of course and trust me there are a stack of downloaded LiveCD/DVD's
here and several retail boxes of various distros I've picked up over
the years ... just none of them have ever worked sufficiently well for
me to retain as an alternative desktop. I guess part of that being I
don't have any issues running XP, have loads of XP only apps (or the
alternatives under Linux / OSX aren't as easy for me or 'complete'
(functions missing etc)) plus a load of Windows games etc. For our
Daughter it's a matter of going without the real MSN Messenger and cam
(on both Linux and OSX). Ok, she can do the IM typing bit reasonably
well on both but even if they did support cams it still wouldn't have
all the 'features' of the real Messenger?

Not used any 64 bit stuff as yet, mainly down to the fact that I for
see it ending in tears ... no driver for X or Y not running properly
etc. I have removed Vista for two people now (they have gone back to
XP) and know of another who has finally given up with it (64bit) on
his new mega gaming machine. I also have a couple of mates who love it
but then really only use their machines as Internet terminals so
pretty well anything will do?

Of course, but without direct hand holding and not yet being
sufficiently confident that all of my hardware will work in any case I
often give up (or actually get back to what I was supposed to be doing
in the first place!).

Could you explain that bit please Simes?

Understood. I am more interested in the hardware side of things (been
building PC's for 20 years etc) and I guess I just am used to the
Windows / ZP way of doing things. eg. I *like* the way it tells me
I've just introduced some new hardware and that it works straight
away, needs to have a look on the net or needs me to install a driver
etc. If I need to get the driver manually I go to the website, select
the product then click on the 'Windows' driver. More often than not,
jobs done. With OSX / Linux they don't always tell you there is new
hardware and then (especially with Linux) you often have a range of
options re what to download, not all of them completely intuitive to
me. Not only that, once you have them it's not always obvious how you
'install' them?

But I'll keep trying different Linux distros as they present
themselves and turn our daughters Mac Mini on now and again (if only
to check it still works and do the updates etc) but for everyday 'use'
I'm happy where I am (and that's not Vista) ;-)

All the best ..

T i m

 

Then why do you bother?

--
_______
..'_/_|_\_'. Ace (b.rogers at ifrance.com)
\`\ | /`/
`\\ | //' BOTAFOT#3, SbS#2, UKRMMA#13, DFV#8, SKA#2, IBB#10
`\|/`
`

 

Just because really, that and the hope that one day they will actually
come up with a real fully working and fully supported version to suit
the non Nix / technical folk, like me.

I like my old R100RT but I tried a 900 Divvy for a week because I was
fed up with some back luck reliability_wise on the BM [1]. It then
re-affirmed the thought that the RT was still for me.

All the best ..

T i m

[1] Cracked coil took out ignition amp. Stripped clutch splines on a
dealer serviced 34k bike.

 

U suppose I had the advantage of (years ago) having as part of my duties,
driving an HP3000 - runing HPUX. I still remember some of the little
tricks of Unix that make it different to DOS/Windows.

I refused to fall into that mindset! I like learning new things! There
appears to be a lot more interest in Linux now than there has ever been -
and I am down with the kids in hood don'tcha know.

Indeed. But a class 6 SD card shouldn't be much slower than the main
drives.

I've not done that yet - mine has 1 gig anyway - and it seems enough -
for the moment.

I bet you've got the paper size selection wrong, or have tried to magnify
the image (or any other printer setting fun!) :-(

I am printing photographs at A4 OK - and 6*4 - and obviously all the
usual word docs and stuff. Seems fine. YMMV obviously.

Tell her to get onto the high-pie diet and get them finger nice and pudgy.

So does Linux. You only get asked the first time it finds a new one. As
long as you set wireless to start on boot it will connect automatically
to a known AP.

XP - the OS of the bone idle?

Why not cam? Cams work fine here (don't use MSN/PIDGIN I must admit -
but for Skype the cams work OK).

Vista 64bit is slow as **** to move/copy large files and even fails on
occasion (talking about files of 4gig plus). Linux just shifts then
without any fuss. The who access to drives etc under Linux just feels so
much more snappy comapared to Vista. A good example - my camera takes
8gig CF cards. On a busy day out I might take 1500 pics on a card - to
download the card (from USB card-reader) to hard drive in Vista64 takes
20 to 30 mins. In Linux - maybe 2 to 3 mins...

Obviously for Internet terminal use it's ideal as it's a lot safer than
Windows for the types who would run odd exe files etc...

Agreed - you sometimes need to do a bit of research - but it's getting
better. And there are those who would argue that is a positive that
protects the machine a little...

I don't want to appear to be a Linux evangelist - but it's getting better
all the time. And Ubuntu 8.04 really does take some beating...