I was in UK for 5 weeks in April/May this year, and initially looked at buying a 3 dongle, as they are
substantially cheaper than in Australia!
Having gone through every one in the PC store (can't remember the name) and not found one that would work, I gave up. The store checked each one on their PC's (mine's a Mac) and also had each one fail
So I finished up using wireless networks, which worked just fine around all of England (and a bit of Wales
). But if I'd got a working dongle, it may have been more convenient in the long run
