I was called into a client today in town. No problem, grab the shoulder bag (man purse?) with all my gear in and drive to a free parking area, a short walk and I was at the client. A five minute job involving a mallet (don’t ask) and a fifteen minute chat, and I was finished. So, may as well grab a coffee at Nero’s and get a bit of work done while people watching, or so I thought.
At home I have BT Broadband which has always given me access to BT Openzone hotspots all over the country, usually with a bit of hassle, but I can normally get it working. This time, no such luck. The laptop would connect but not allow me to log on and the iPhone just hung trying to load a web page. Couldn’t even use 3G on the phone because it insisted on connecting over WiFi, this is where S60′s always asking how to connect it is an advantage, on the iPhone you have to turn off WiFi to force it onto 3G (and I just know I will forget to turn it back on) . When I did get it on 3G, I remembered that the tether option had gone away at the last software update!
No worry I thought, I’ll use the unlocked MiFi. Hmm, real struggle to get it to connect and only 300k download speeds, but at least it worked. For a while. It seems that it runs the battery down even when switched off, so not having checked it for a week or so, I only had a few minutes of power! So now I have it plugged into the laptop with a Heath Robinson affair of wires and connectors to charge it.
I could have used my old T-Mobile Dongle, but I never remember to keep it topped up with credit, and really, how many means of connecting do I need to get a reliable system? This stuff should just work!
Almost half an hour of messing about to get connected and even then at a pretty slow speed, it’s no wonder normal people don’t bother.
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It is a real fiddle isn’t it. I guess this is one advantage of a smartphone in terms of connecting, but you can’t always do ‘real’ work with that.
Why didn’t you just enjoy technology in terms of reading an ebook or something like that. I often feel the need to be connected, when really I am often better off relaxing enjoying some music and some light reading.
I am now paying for an Internet tongle, which is my only means of connecting to the Internet, though at work I can use WiFi again. I also pay for data on my mobile. Having got a Netbook over the weekend and I’ve been playing with it a lot, I am wondering if I should not just cut back to Netbook and dongle only and be satisfied with that. Though I’m sure when the honeymoon period is over I’ll claim it’s just not convenient enough and that it takes too long to get connected!
>>>Why didn’t you just enjoy technology in terms of reading an ebook or something like that.
I actually had to do some work. so it wasn’t an option. But I know what you mean, it’s very easy in the connected world to loose track of doing simple things like reading or listening to music. Trouble is, at my age when I do things like that I tend to fall asleep!