Internet access via a cell phone on a laptop

[Dan]

I wanted mobile internet access for rides, work and just to sit in a park and surf the web. Got an air card and it was terrible. $64 bucks a month and fell off every 3 minutes and slower then mud going up hill on a winter day.
So I got a wireless router for the shop/garage but still could not get far.

Any way, I hooked up my cell phone to my shop lap top. I am connected to the internet right now threw it. Is almost as fast as my wireless router connection!

I down loaded this freebee; About.com: http://junefabrics.com/android/download.php

Here is some directions for use but ya don't need em; How To Tether Your Cell Phone with PdaNet - Step by Step Instructions for Android Tethering

Just kinda fun. Ya know when your resting during a ride and there is no one to share the smile on yer face, thumbs up from a stranger or really cool picture?

 

[Elmo]

Know what ya mean about the air card, mine was as slow as dialup.

 

[Dan]

This is pretty amazing Elmo. I'm still on it. Been about 20 mins. Not any thing close to blazing fast but way better then the air card and my unlimited data plan (with 300 mins phone time) is $25 a month!

LOL, and the phone is charging off the plugged in laptop. The batt life on the phone is terrible. Have to recharge every night.
No free phones with Virgin, but $25 a month. With the air card and 2 phones, we were paying $200 a month with Verizon. The phone/reception quality was great but should be fer that much cash.

 

[Goat Herder]

Wow Dan 25 dollars a month is pretty nice! Is that with all the tax included? I might wanna switch my cell service over?

I just got one of the Majicjacks for plugging a phone into a computer. Its the other way around. What it does is for 20 dollars a year unlimited calling, even long distance and a year later just pay'em 20 more dollars. It uses a computers existing internet connection to plug a home/house phone into and provides a nifty usb adapter thingy to plug the phone into. Windows 7 automatically loaded the program and the drivers!

Been loving it so far the calls are surprisingly clear can't complain any. I am on day two right now with it tho.

 

[Dan]

That is awesome Goat. I looked in to them way back and it was not good, the reviews. But some one else here said they really liked it. In the house, we have 2 phone carriers so 2 master phone bills! Drives me insane. But I keep getting voted down but gonna share your thoughts on it. Was thinking vonage but 20 bucks a year! Wohoo.

The Virgin cell plan is really great. The only problem is not great reception on the phone. But is about like my old cell but not as good as Carol's old one. But she loves having the interweb on her phone, so worked out. Except she keeps going over the 300 mins, LOL. Gonna bump her up to the $40 a month plan. I kinda like hearing her voice and now she worries about it and talks fast and wants to hang up quickly. (har, lol. wanna make a "Yankee" joke but I am one)

LOL Goat. Carol knows you guys by name. Well, yer "goat" but just went in and was telling her about your liking magicjack. She asked; "Who liked it?" Just cracked me up. Like we all hang out at the local watering hole or work together.

Any way, thanks for the heads up on magicjack. Gonna try it.

 

[Goat Herder]

I just bought a cheep cordless phone set the Vtech DECT6.0 and the Mj. My buddy let me try his MJ kit for a couple of days. Trusting fellow lol Ha It works flawlessly here on my internet connection. So I took the plunge! Was just now registering this one I read Internationale calls are extra. For me no biggie. No more loosing track of my cell minutes anymore!


Here is a thought was just wondering if your phone will chain the whole darn thing together? Ha Ha

 

[Dan]

Was just thinking the same thing Goat, sorta. For folks here who have to go off line when the internet connection gets to be to much $. $25 a month fer phone plus internet. Be pretty cool. Hate when folks report they have been gone due to a bill issue.

I said this a couple of yrs ago but think some day our cell phones will also be our TVs, computers, GPS's and what ever else is around the corner. Exciting time to be alive.

I used to have a ton of friends in the EU and Eastern Europe. I used video chat on yahoo IM. Free and could play games.

Dang, I should get back on. Miss them folks.

 

[Goat Herder]

How fast was your internet connection through that phone? Will it play You tube fluently?

 

[Dan]

Just about as fast as the wireless. But is a brand new laptop and I have yet to get rid of the bloatware. So I really think the laptop it self is a PITA. A youtube vid stops about half way threw on both the wireless or connected threw the cell. But cell is slower.

LOL, I learned this sending Paul this vid for his birthday. YouTube - ‪Zac Brown Band - Knee Deep (ft. Jimmy Buffett)‬‏

I been playing it over and over. Just got Carol talked in to moving on to a house boat and going down to see him.

2 funny Goat. all these posts and neither one of us went off on a tangent about pets or cartoons. Are we getting old?

 

[Goat Herder]

Well with seeing that video. I will be off to go fishing soon lol. That is a beautiful place wish I could get out there sometime.

I did more reading about the M.J. Easy way to use magicJack without usb dongle... | magicJack and MagicJack Plus Unofficial Support Have not made it through all the reading yet. You don't even have to plug in the usb dongle with it there is a sweat hack that will put it onto the computer you are using.

Then just use a head set or plug a mike into the said computers mic port running the comp speakers. Wala! no phone and no dongle! Don't even have to carry it with you. These folks said they put it on there spare computers and it worked.

The Vtech DECT6.0 phone was to quite at times speaker phone or normal and I got good hearing. Gonna return it was disappointing. I had a normal wired home phone to compare it to. No comparison the wired did way better. I am using for ten bucks more and have to phones hand sets. Plus the Ni cad batteries are just normal two AAA rechargeables Panasonic KX TG6512B DECT 60 Plus Digital 2 Handset Cordless Phone BlackSilver by Office Depot

This one is much better. I have not found any problems with it yet. Sorta a his and hers phone can keep them nicely across the house. The sound quality is more stable too all though the speaker phone could be better. Its Solid like the Lan wired old school one tho.

I am pretty savvy with these comps lately. More especially after doing a lot of linux study for the last couple of years .

I bought the M.J. they gave me the first year of membership free! So this ditty could have done around 50 dollars total for me if I really had to and ran it until July 4 2012. Pretty Kewl.

Funny you said cartoons lol lol lol I tried to get a custome Phone # Looked for an hour too ''THE TICK'' but it was already taking

YouTube - ‪The Tick - Pilot‬‏

 

[Dan]

LOL Goat. My morning gig got us new shirts and I had to wash them so as not to shrink. Carol came down stairs and asked me what I was doing. Used my all time favorite "The Tick" Line; "I'm doing laundry!" and pointed to the dryer.

The Tick vs. The Mole Men

 

[Dan]

Update. Just put PDaNet on another, much faster laptop. It is almost as fast as cable on this one!

Which means I really gotta clean up my snazy little cheap laptop. Has windows 7 on it so thinking the newest was bestest. Dunno why I gotta learn over and over that is not always true. But it has no disk drive so have found how to use a USB drive to DL the OS, is still messing with it big time and stuff could go wrong.

Any way, on this PC is amazingly fast and can in good conscience say so.


0.35 Mbps down load speed and 0.04 upload according to Speakeasy - Speed Test

LOL! compared to 33.00 Mbps up and 8.66 download speeds. But going to regular webpages I frequente, more then good enough for a back up for the cable. Goes out a few times a year due to storms and such.

PAdNet can also connect via Bluetooth.

 

[Dan]

I was mistaken. It is charging while connected via USB cable.

 

[jburr36]

I use my sprint phone for my internet and voice calls. On 4G I get 3.89 Mbps with the wifi connection. About 1.10 Mbps on the 3G through the wifi. I pay $110 a month. $69 for the everything data plan with 400 minutes talk but all calls to any cell phone on any carrier is not charged against the 400 minutes and I have nights and weekends. No limit on the data downloaded. I pay an extra $30 a month to use my phone as a wireless hotspot so I can connect up to 5 computers to it. Not too bad.

 

[Dan]

Cool JBurr. Some great speeds.

Goat, trying to speed up the little laptop, I wanted to try ubuntu. (I know but never got it to work way back when you suggested it)

Could not get it to load on a memory stick. But burned a CD and am running it on the laptop with a disk drive. This rocks! Blazing fast and really like the GUI. Really simple to learn even with the language thing. Gonna play with it for a week but am thinking I am going to seriously consider ditching all the Windows OS's in the house. (back em up but primarily use ubuntu)

..and Firefox's spell check is way better then Chromes, lol.

 

[bishop letov]

Be careful if You have verizon... They just dumped the unlimited Data and itll cost you more for 4 hours of surfing via your cell phone then two china girl kits

 

[Dan]

Not having a disk drive on this mini laptop and not being able to get Ubuntu on a usb drive, was about to give up. Had already downloaded it onto here. But then tried to look up how to load it on a memory card. I had one in the new cell phone. Could not get it to "drag and drop" in the file. (Ubuntu can not be directly downloaded and installed)

So then tried "Copy and Paste" IT WORKED! Took less then an hr to set up and laptop is working great. Now duel boots with either Windows 7 or Ubuntu.

 

[Goat Herder]

Not having a disk drive on this mini laptop and not being able to get Ubuntu on a usb drive, was about to give up. Had already downloaded it onto here. But then tried to look up how to load it on a memory card. I had one in the new cell phone. Could not get it to "drag and drop" in the file. (Ubuntu can not be directly downloaded and installed)

So then tried "Copy and Paste" IT WORKED! Took less then an hr to set up and laptop is working great. Now duel boots with either Windows 7 or Ubuntu.

Man that's really Kewl Dan. Some of this OS stuff is a pain in the butt to set up. Which version distro are you running? For the Adobe Flash and other codecs. Go to the console ''located at drop down menu accessories terminal'' It is simple Just Type ''sudo apt-get update'' first then enter wait after type '' sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras '' Put this in your console hit enter type your personal pass word if it asks then wait. It is very interesting watch that screen will be very busy! After it does it's thing You Tube, Hulu and a pretty big list of codecs will start working perfectly! https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats

If there is a agree to choice that shows up during the update on some net books and lap tops the button with the old school windows flag insignia is the tab button. Hit tab hit enter. You can also find Restricted extras in the software center. I like the console better.

I use VideoLAN - VLC: Official site - Free multimedia solutions for all OS! on Windows and linux it will play just about every video codec there is.


Also check here http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/features/ubuntu-software-center It is in your menu drop down list tons of stuff here from open source.

 

[Goat Herder]

Unfortunately when ever I Google for a tutorial for you they want to tell a guy to install some program. You can manually clean out that windows 7 and make it run really good. As fast as the Ubuntu me thinks. This link sorta say's what I mean but a guy can definitely mess things up here big time if they don't know what they are doing. How to Clean the Registry Manually | An Waray Blogger

I would recommend every bloatware spam program they stuck from the factory you are not using to consider uninstalling. After that perhaps use a program like Malwarebytes : Free anti-malware, anti-virus and spyware removal download it takes it about an hour to do a full scan. For best odds run it in safe mode.

I just remembered something else VERY IMPORTANT TO SAY if you are on a new distro of Windows even 7 it will try to update Windows in the back ground and you may not even know it is happening at the time. It's times like these that a Windows OS will run very sluggish especially at the internet browser. Sometimes with a Windows OS it is just good to walk away from it and let it run when this happens.


When Ubuntu updates you can set it to go automatically or manually. You will notice that computer OS is never sluggish like the other during this process. That's the way it has been for me anyway.

 

[Aaron Nelson]

I had a normal version phone plan with the data plan. But the data was for a very small amount, half a gig a month. So I upgraded to the unlimited data plan and began downloading patches and mods for a game I play. It was about 25 gigs worth. It worked way faster than my home line or the download speed at work.

Then I got my phone bill. Some how the two departments had a failure to communicate. I was still on my old plan of 500mb. They charge $.25 per mb over that limit. My phone bill was for $5,800.00 . They fixed it, but dang be careful when tethering your laptop, and beware what plan you have before you begin.