Here's an update on the MiFi 2200 Prepaid Mobile Hot Spot (Virgin Mobile). The system works well, but it does get mighty warm when operating from a wall plug rather than it's battery. The battery life of the one I have is not great by any means; slightly over a couple of hours. The first two times I used it (on battery alone), it seemed to eat a lot of megabytes. I'm thinking this was because while charging it, even though my iPad was off, the hotspot was still showing activity. The iPad may have been accessing it in the background. The last time I used it, I had it plugged in to a wall socket, and the device seemed to deliver the goods with quite a bit less usage of my MB allowance. The device did get hot, though, and I found it quite useful to keep a gentle fan blowing on it to keep it cool.
I'll know more about the MB usage by this time next week, as I plan to use it exclusively while plugged in to a power source.
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Originally Posted by ApK
I'm glad I stumbled on this thread. I have been avoiding smartphones because the data plans are silly-expensive for the non-essential stuff I'd want it for, but a pay-as-you-go thing at a reasonable price like this might be just the ticket for my wife and me, who often travel with an iPod and/or notebook PC.
$10 for a 100MB...Hmm...anyone know off hand how much data a low-quality Netflix video stream uses...or a Pandora audio stream?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Low-res video will about 150-200MB/hour. Audio perhaps 30MB/hour. You really don't want to do streaming over a 3G connection. That way lies mega charges!
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What Harry said, ApK. Video will swallow your wallet whole if you try streaming movies on a 3G connection.
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Originally Posted by HarryT
If you're interested in WiFi hotspots, you may wish to consider getting BT Broadband, carpetmojo. They operate a very useful system called "BT-FON". Essentially you agree to "donate" about 5% of your broadband bandwidth for use as a public WiFi hotspot (it's completely segregated from your personal traffic) and, in return, you get to use every other FON member's hotspot for free. They have something like 2 million FON hotspots for use; no matter where I go, there seems to be at least a couple of them in range. It works really well.
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That sounds interesting, but (1) the service doesn't seem to have arrived in my neck of the woods, and (2) even though "it's completely segregated from your personal traffic"; if someone, unbeknownst to me, downloads pirated material, can the download be traced to my system? (I speak as one who only secured their home WiFi
after getting accused by Sony of downloading a copyrighted movie. We believe one of our neighbors was piggybacking on our system.)