Quezi

Image by Daniel Voyager - CC-BY

There are three main technologies you can use to connect a laptop or webtop to the internet: WiFi, WiMax and Cellular radio. A satellite connection is also technically possible but is likely to be expensive and impractical.

A WiFi connection can use the home WiFi connection from your wireless router. Away from home you will find free WiFi in many coffee shops and other commercial premises, but if you don’t have free coverage where you need it you will have to buy access. Usually this involves paying a monthly fee for access to any WiFi hotspot within the network.

If your laptop is not WiFi capable, you will need a small USB or PCMCIA WiFi adaptor.

WiMax is a data-only service designed to provide wireless coverage over greater distances than WiFi, but it’s not available everywhere. In the US, Xohm provides mobile broadband using WiMax. You will need a WiMax adapter and a WiMax data plan.

You can also connect your laptop to the internet “on the move” using cellular radio together with one of these technologies: a USB adapter, a WiFi router, a cable connection to a cellphone, or a Bluetooth/WiFi connection to a cellphone. You will also need a data plan from a cellphone service provider such as Verizon, Sprint or AT&T in the US or T-Mobile, Orange, 3, O2 or Vodafone in the UK.

The connection speed varies according depending on the coverage of your cellular service provider. The fastest widely-available technology is HSPA (“high speed packet access”) also known as HSDPA, followed by 3G (“third generation”), followed by EDGE and GPRS. The last two are on the slow side for serious use, 3G is usable but slowish, and HSPA can feel snappy under good conditions.

A USB or PCMCIA adapter can be used to make the connection. It’s worth getting an HSPA-capable adapter, which can “fallback” to slower speeds if HSPA network coverage is not available. Check for compatibility.

You can pair a USB adapter (“dongle”) with a portable router like the Huawei D100 to connect to the cellular network and provide a local WiFi hotspot. If you have no cellular data signal deep inside a building, you can put this device by a window where it can get a cellular signal and rebroadcast it as WiFi.

A cellphone can be used as a data connection for a laptop in three ways. For most WiFi-enabled phones, a software application is available that lets the phone share its cellular data connection using WiFi.  If your phone doesn’t do WiFi, perhaps it does Bluetooth? If your cellphone supports the Bluetooth DUN profile (“Dial Up Networking”) you just need a USB Bluetooth adapter on your laptop, which costs around $10. Finally, some phones can be connected to a laptop using a USB cable that lets the laptop use the cellphone as a modem.

Make sure you understand the pricing of your data plan. Some plans have extremely high charges if you exceed your data allowance. Even so-called “unlimited” plans sometimes have a “fair use limit” which you must not exceed. Watching online video uses a lot of data very quickly (megabytes per minute, sometimes).