Dongles

[mr. small fry]

Let me start by pointing out the obvious - I know very little about computers, so please excuse my ignorance if this is a daft question.

I recently bought a netbook in the UK, but was advised that I would have to buy a "dongle" in order to use my sim card to access the internet. I am led to believe that a dongle is a devise that permits me to plug my sim card into a USB port.

I already have a contract for the sim card that fits neatly inside my old computer, so today when I went to buy a dongle I was advised that I would have to sign another contract - or pay a fortune (circa $140) to get an "unlocked" one.

Clearly I do not want to sign another contract, so is there any way of unlocking a dongle, are there cheaper options available, or does anyone have a better idea?

Perhaps I bought a pup here, but I thought that the concept behind netbooks was simple access to the internet, for simple users like me!

Thanking you in anticipation,

Confused from Croydon - aka mr. small fry

[Senior Paper Monitor]

Whart network is your SIM from - I may have a spare dongle ?

[al446]

I think you may be able to do this with a 3G phone but have never tried it.

[preduk]

Most networks these days have Pay As You go dongles, I would ask about them.

[Jayles]

Hi there,

Do you netbook and handphone have bluetooth? U can link them up using bluetooth and start using the internet. In any case you need to use the sim card gateway, the best approach is still to approach your sim provider. They will recommend u a "dongle" compatible to ya sim card network. Hope this helps.... :rolleyes:

[Keef]

Do I read it correctly that you already have a contract SIM with internet access on it? If so, you can use it in a dongle - if you can get one: I've not seen many SIM-free dongles for sale.

If it's a "pay as you go" SIM, there's not much mileage in trying to get a dongle for it anyway.

For reasons I've not worked out, a USB or PCMCIA dongle for mobile internet is expensive. My mobile phone contract includes more GPRS/HSDPA data than I ever need, and it works with the laptop on my desk and the phone in my pocket. That's the phone plus £7.50 a month for the data.

If you have a spare cellphone with GPRS/HSDPA capability, a USB lead for that (or Bluetooth) may be a workable solution without paying out a load.

[planecrazy.eu]

I had a a pack with three for un'ltd internet on my phone, but when you use the phone as a modem, you get charged and it states this in the small print too.

You get a dongle for free with contracts, the same as you get a free phone with a contract.

They are around £80 for dongle, but you need to get the one for the network, and they are all around the same price.

However, if the sim is a data sim, then maybe using a phone as a modem is no trouble and you'll not get charged per mb like i did.

I used it as a bluetooth modem too, and it was really, really slow. So use a USB Cable.

[green granite]

For years a dongle has meant a device that plugs into the printer/usb port of a computer as an anti-pirating device for software but would allow you to have the same program on different machines, just take the dongle with you.

A device that connected to a phone system was called a modem

Now it appears that we have to call a modem a dongle.

http://209.85.48.8/1889/52/emo/zacepi.gif

[Keef]

Dongle is one of those words that has changed in meaning over the years.

When I was working for a living, it was indeed a security key that plugged into the pooter.

Now, its almost anything that plugs in.

None of which helps the original enequiry, whereas a SIM-free dongle would.

[planecrazy.eu]

Its a dongle as its hardware that connects via USB.

Correct term is a Mobile Broadband Dongle.

You can get wi-fi, bluetooth and even tpm dongles and dongles that have a serial in the actual hardware of the dongle for top end software.

Sales people cant be bothered to call them mobile broadband dongles all day long, thus they just call them dongles, thus the mass public start thinking a dongle is something that gets you on the web from your laptop on the move.

I remember been in sales, people used to come in for a memory stick, and it used to be a toss up if they was asking for a Pen-Drive or Sony MS.

As for using a phone, its 100% fine as long as your sim package includes a data allowance as three tell me that if i connect via my phone to the internet it goes via a different server to if i connect via my laptop with my phone, dont know how that figures, but they offered me a package to allow me to ues my phone as a modem with 3gb data allowance for £5 as i moaned, but i bet its a standard package.

[Feline]

"Locked" USB dongle modems are another rip off by the cell phone industry. With a bit of ingenuity you can unlock a locked modem, but it can involve re-flashing the firmware which is not for the faint hearted.

I recently acquired an ASUS T500 3.5G PC Card (cost was somewhat less than $150) and it is non-network specific. This is a PC Express Card, but it comes with an adapter into which it plugs, with a double USB lead, one for signal and power, and the other just for power (I actually manage to use it with just one USB lead - Power & Signal plugged in - but depending on your Netbook - you may need to use both leads - ie. use two USB ports on your Netbook).

It comes with software on a CD-ROM (350Mb) - if you don't have an external CD-ROM drive for your Netbook you can copy it to a memory stick and install from there.

When you have installed the software on the Netbook, and inserted your SIM card into the T500, it recognises who issued the SIM card and automatically sets itself up for that ISP.

There are 3G devices that look like a fat memory stick (and only use one USB port). Sony Ericsson make one, as do Huawei (the E169G). I haven't tried one - but I'm interested ...

I would strongly suggest that you only use a pay-as-you-go SIM card for data (you load it with some airtime and then "buy" a databundle from your airtime. Only load just over the amount you need for the databundle - reason being that once you exceed the databundle that you have loaded, the "out-of-bundle" rate jumps by a factor ten (or more) and starts really depleting the balance of your airtime.

You don't specifically need a 3G SIM card - my experience is that any 32K SIM card will work fine. I buy 'em from a Discount Pharmacy at about $0.10 each - you may need to put them into a phone to activate them and load the databundle. You may need more thasn one SIM card because some SP's make it very difficult to recharge them within the thirty day validity of the initial bundle - and some require you to make at least one call, or send one text to keep them valid.

BE VERY CAREFUL of combined voice/data SIM cards - I had a very expensive experience earlier in the year when I exceeded my databundle and wound up with a $10 000 bill at the end of the month Mobile Service Providers sure know how to milk their customers - barstewards! Also, when using a mobile handheld as a modem, you can't use it as a phone ...

Am now running the entire household off pre-paid SIMs - no more nasty shocks at the end of the month!

Need any more info or help - just post to the forum...

[green granite]

Its a dongle as its hardware that connects via USB.

So a digital camera is a dongle then?

[Feline]

GG - Nah! Not Really ... A quick Wikipedia search reveals that:

Dongle was used by the late Peter Sellers in an episode of the BBC Goon Show radio series, The Vanishing Room from December 1957. The whole sentence is "Flip my dongle and lower my grobblers" as an expression of surprise.

From which I deduce that a dongle typically dangles ... (and I'm not going any further down this particular road!)

I dimly recall using the first HP Programmable Calculator (a Model 85) sometime in the 60's in which some professional engineering programme would only run if you inserted a dongle into the serial port. It made sure that only the licensed user who physically possessed the dongle could use the programme! It was also a bl**dy nuisance because you could only print via the serial port - so you had to take the dongle out - and then the bl**dy programme didn't work. Doh! Eventually they came out with a pass thru dongle which sort of worked.

My definition of a dongle would be something that hangs off a computer (either via a serial port or - more commonly these days - via a USB port) that enables some functionality in the computer but doesn't do anything by itself when unplugged from the computer.

So, sorry, imho your camera doesn't qualify since it does have a function when not connected to the computer.

Actually, I personally find the word "dongle" vaguely quaint and archaic - dating back to an age when you actually needed to programme a computer to do what you wanted it to do each and every time you switched it on (which I guess is also somewhat quaint and archaic).

[green granite]

Sorry Feline I left the :rolleyes: symbol off the end of my post.

It was a comment on the post that said, in effect, that any piece of hardware connected to a computer via the USB port is a dongle.

[Feline]

No offence taken GG - I too left off the icon of a grey-haired old f*rt preaching from a soap box! :=

[mr. small fry]

Dear PPRune posters,

First thanks for your illuminating replies and offers of assistance, and apologies for not have responded sooner, but it's been tricky of late to get online!!

I have tried many places and they all advise me the same thing - I need an unlocked dongle. I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and pay for one, but it breaks my heart to pay over the odds because of some protectionist racket!

[IRpilot2006]

This (http://www.dc-unlocker.com/) company will probably have a product. I am about to try it to unlock a vodafone 3g modem - hope it works!