3g wireless dongles - any good

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latercomer2

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Has anyone got any experience of the 3g wireless dongles for general purpose internet access? I need a way to get online in the evenings when at home for a few weeks and was wondering about getting a 3g wireless dongle from 3 as they offer one with a 5gb limit for £15 on a 1 month contract which seems pretty reasonable.

Not intending on doing any heavy bandwidth stuff, just for general surfing and forum hopiing :)

thanks
 
The best deal was the one Vodafone used to do, which was PAYG but never expired the bandwidth you paid for at the end of the month...Strangely enough, they stopped offering them quickly!

Back to your question, yes they are fine and perfectly usable for general internet use, provided you are actually in decent reception at home. Unfortunately the only real way to find this out is to borrow or buy one and see, the online reception checkers and maps are no use at all indoors! (on any network)
 
Reception is a problem, i remember when i had one. I ended up getting good and bad speed in different places around my flat. In the end to get a good signal at the desk had to use usb extender and dangled it from the curtain pole.
 
I use a 3 Mi-Fi (with the screen) and it's great.

On Tuesday I was in a Leeds hotel conference room sharing the connection with 4 other laptops and was getting download speeds of ~470Kb - almost as fast as home!

They also do a £5.11/month (1 month contract) with 2GB data SIM-only deal which was the best I could find...
 
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Do what I did. Get am unlocked stick or even better a mi-fi from eBay and then get a PAYG 3 card with 3GB again from EBay for around £7 which lasts me 2-3 months.

No contract and you can use any card from any company as they come with better PAYG deals or if they have better coverage in other areas.
 
I sometimes use a 3 dongle. The speed is nowhere near ADSL or cable but for light surfing it's not too bad.
 
thanks for all the replies - I hadn't considered ebay for them was looking at mobile companies to see who had the best deal.
I did look at the 3 MiFi but the equipment costs put me off if you want a 1 month contract. I'm hoping it will only be required for a few weeks and then back my cable broadband and hence dont want to fork out more than I have to.
 
micloi said:
Do what I did. Get am unlocked stick or even better a mi-fi from eBay and then get a PAYG 3 card with 3GB again from EBay for around £7 which lasts me 2-3 months.
Click to expand...

I've had a quick look at I cant see any that are that cheap in comparison with just getting a basic one from 3? you can get that for £4.99 on the 5Gb £15.99 1 month rolling contract

Any links to point out what I'm missing would be great :)
 
Just a quick update to say I've got it sorted - work have borrowed one from someone else for just now and will sort out something next week so its going to cost me nothing except having to do some work in the evenings to justify it.

Thanks again for the replies.
 
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