Tethering (Wireless Internet Via Cellphone)

[BraydenW]

Does anyone here do it?

I'm looking into buying a laptop (wanted to build one myself but it's looking out of the question now) and I've heard of and researched a little information about a thing called tethering. Tethering is when you connect a chord from your cellphones Bluetooth to a USB port and you can leech internet off it (some third-party software may be required). What I'm asking is does anybody here do it? Where can you buy the equipment need to achieve this? and is there a website or two you can give me to find out more about this?

I think this is an awesome thing to do as it is cheaper than wireless internet if you already have a cellphone (maybe costs $7 for unlimited internet). I heard the speed is about twice as fast as dial up. So 56kbits/s x 2 = 112 kbits/s. So about a 14kbytes/s download speed. Not bad considering I'd mainly use it for email and maybe a little browsing.

 

[frozenlead]

I've used my dad's, he's got a blackberry world edition (don't know model, I like windows mobile units, XV6700 here ).

You can use bluetooth, but bluetooth is a wireless technology, it requires no cord at all. You may also use a miniUSB to USB cable, too, which is more battery efficient. Speed is a bit faster than dial-up (but I haven't used dial-up in a while, so maybe that's a bit skew.)

You use an application provided by your network provider for the connection. Verizon's was really easy to use.

I would never use it extensively, it's just too slow. Takes up to 30 seconds to load a page, sometimes more. (this on an HTML plain format gmail page.)

If you do use it, I recommend you get Firefox and install Adblock Plus.

Even if you don't use it, I recommend you get Firefox and install Adblock Plus.

 

[BraydenW]

I'm hooked to IE...JK. It's hard to keep a straight face saying that. I actually use SeaMonkey, which is just Firefox and Thunderbird combined. I'd really only use it to receive emails so speed really isn't a huge issue. I plan to get my services through Virgin Mobile so I'm not sure how this would work, but I'll contact them through their support and see. Thanks for the help.