Results 1 to 15 of 15

Thread: Mobile Communications

  1. #1
    Ardross
    Guest
    I have just spent a week working away from home and chambers and will be doing so again for most of next week and part of December

    Although I had my laptop with me to do some work and notes on - the hotel although plush was a bit out of the ark as far as e mail connectivity etc .

    Anyone have any idea about these devices where i connect my mobile to my laptop and send and receive emails and attachments - or these Blackberry things which seem too advanced for my brain to understand

  2. #2
    Ardross
    Guest
    :P Thanks a bunch - you useless lot

  3. #3
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2004
    Posts
    284
    Thanks
    0
    Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts
    When you are out of chambers are you a loose cannon ? :P

  4. #4
    Gone But Not Forgotten
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Location
    Banstead, Surrey
    Posts
    6,108
    Thanks
    0
    Thanked 28 Times in 7 Posts
    I don't think that the techies get out of bed on Sundays

  5. #5
    Derek.Burgess
    Guest
    Love to help,but the wife won't let me.

  6. #6
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Posts
    104
    Thanks
    1
    Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
    I can help Ardross - I connect to the internet using my IPAQ. Just going out but will try to put something up here tonight.

  7. #7
    Ardross
    Guest
    Cheers Ian

  8. #8
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Posts
    104
    Thanks
    1
    Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
    Re picking sending and receiving email when you are on the move from your laptop.
    You have a number of options (I am assuming hotel doesn't have ADSL connection):-

    1. Assuming your laptop has a modem, then connect your modem to the telephone socket in your room and dial-up your ISP. This can be expensive because hotels normally charge a premium rate for dialling from your room. If you're paying normal BT rates then dial-up is the cheap but it is also very slow (typically achieve around 45 kilobits per second).

    2. Some of the big hotel chains, such as Marriots, have in premise WiFi Networks. This means that all you need is a Wi-Fi 802.11 wireless networking card in your laptop to access the internet. These start at about £20 for a PCMCIA card which is a format that fits in most laptops. You don't say in your email where your mail server is so I can't elaborate on how to get to your mail server once you are on the internet.
    Aswell as hotels, airports, Starbucks and Costa coffee houses also operate such WiFi hotspots. This method is between about 250 and and 1200 times faster than dial-up modem. The tariffs charged by the operators vary but for example Starbucks charges start at about £5.00 for 60 minutes. There are security issues about using public WiFi hotspots which is too big a subject to discuss here but if you are sending and receiving confidential data you need to take certain security measures to ensure that your data is encrypted and is not accessible to other users on the network.

    3. I guess the one that you are really interested in is mobile communications i.e. GSM or GPRS communications using the same technology as your mobile phone uses. You have two options in this area.
    i) use GSM communications. This is slow (9600 bps - slower than your dial-up modem). All you need is a mobile phone and a current GSM (voice) contract with one of the operators. Depending on you laptop and your mobile phone, your laptop can use your mobile phone to dial-up over GSM but your laptop needs to communicate with your phone in one of 3 ways, 1. Infrared 2. Bluetooth or 3. dedicated data cable. The disadvantage of Infrared is that it is line of sight i.e. you have to line up the infrared port on your laptop with the infrared port on your mobile phone. Infrared also only has a range of about 1 metre. Bluetooth is not line of sight and has a range of about 10 metres although it is slower than infrared.
    I find Bluetooth a lot easier to use.
    Rather than using your mobile phone, you can insert a GSM mobile data card directly into your PC - again these are available in PCMCIA or CF (Compact flash) format. They start around £150 but if you buy one with a contract with one of the operators, the price is reduced and in many cases the hardware is free.
    When you are connected over GSM, you pay for the time you are connected and pay the same rate that you do for you mobile voice calls.

    ii) use GPRS communications. This is faster than GSM but slower than dial-up. Depite what is quoted, typical data speeds in the UK are significantly less than what is technically possible over GPRS and expect to achieve download speeds between 13kbps and 22kbps depending on the operator, time of day and location. Upload speeds are about the same as GSM. With GPRS you don't have such a long connection time as you do when you are using GSM. As with GSM, you can use a GPRS capable mobile phone (most are) and connect to it from your laptop via IR, Bluetooth or data cable. Or again you can get a dedicated GPRS data card in PCMCIA or Compact Flash format. Once you have got a GPRS enabled device, all you need is to enable your SIM for GPRS (ring your operator). Over GPRS you pay for the data transferred and not for the time that you are connected. However - BIG WARNING - GPRS pricess are still an exorbitant rip-off in the UK, especially if you don'y buy a GPRS data tariff. For example, if you are on say a Vodafone 100 plan and you ask for GPRS to be enabled, you will pay over £7 !! for each Megabyte of data transferred (I think you could have a GSM call open for about 50 minutes at that price). Therefore, if you are going to use GPRS be sure to buy a GPRS tariff from your operator but these are also expensive - Orange tend to be cheapest. As an example Vodafone GPRS plans start at about £12 per month for 5 MB of inclusive data. Of course, it is IMPOSSIBLE to know exactly how much data you are paying for when you are reading emails, browsing the internet etc but it will be more than you expect. If you are browsing the internet, it won't take very long before you have used 1MB of data. My advice would be to install something like Running Voice on your laptop so you know exactly how much data you are paying for.
    Don't forget when using GPRS or GSM comms, you will experience the same problems you experience when making mobile phone calls i.e. loss of signal, reduced bandwidth, no coverage etc.

    This is all a bit rushed and there are options such as Orange HCSD and 3G that I have not covered. If you are going to buy GSM/GPRS hardware then there is some further info I can give you.

    After all that, if you really only want to pick up and send emails when you are away from the office, the way I would do it is to find an Internet Cafe and access my email via Webmail - cheap, reliable and quick. If you use POP3 email but your ISP does not provide webmail then open a Yahoo or MSN Hotmail mail account as these let you pick up email from your POP3 mail server anyway.
    Hope that is useful.

  9. #9
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Location
    Somerset
    Posts
    3,217
    Thanks
    0
    Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts
    my xda II works just fine..... does all the above, more or less - triband - sorted..
    Just Singin' the Blues ........



  10. #10
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Posts
    104
    Thanks
    1
    Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
    xda II has GPRS built in - so if you are happy with small screen that is also an option. It's a very good machine. The only problem is that it doesn't have WiFi built in - so if you want WiFi also you'd have to buy an SD wiFi card.

  11. #11
    Administrator dvds2000's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Location
    Sunderland
    Posts
    2,448
    Thanks
    444
    Thanked 466 Times in 193 Posts
    Blog Entries
    2
    First question shold be, what phone do you currently use? That obviously can affect what type of connection you can use. Also what network and what tariff are you on?

  12. #12
    Ardross
    Guest
    My network is Orange . My phone is old and is going to be replaced - tariff too will be upgraded

    I am afraid a lot of that went over my head - what is Julie's machine?

  13. #13
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Location
    Somerset
    Posts
    3,217
    Thanks
    0
    Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts
    Just do a search on XDA II, James and all will be revealed!

    Basically, it's a mini laptop. You can send/receive emails, connect to the internet, it has a 'pocket' version of MS Office (and you can get a mini keyboard attachment if you want) and it operates with touch screen. It is also, obviously, a mobile phone and the latest version is triband.

    The downside is you'll have to move to O2, as it's a BT product (a big negative for me, as I hate BT with a vengeance), but they are very, very useful and obviously you can upload all your calendar info from your laptop to the xda and vice versa to ensure synchronicity.

    Entering info is either done by usng the picker and a keyboard (or your nails!&#33 or it will recognise your handwriting and you can use the picker simply to write info but my handwriting's so crap, I find it much quicker to type...

    The only downside is, after having a conventional mobile, that it is about twice the size and you feel like you're in a nineties timewarp for a bit when mobs were the size of bricks !
    Just Singin' the Blues ........



  14. #14
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Posts
    104
    Thanks
    1
    Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
    The downside is you'll have to move to O2
    No you don't.

    The XDA II will work on any network. You'd need to buy a SIM free version and then you can use it on any network you like.
    The other thing to note is that all the other network operators do the same machine.

    O2 call their's the XDA II
    Vodafone call their's the VPA III
    T-Mobile call their's the MDA III
    Orange (aboout to be launched) will be called the M2000

    Underneath they're all the same PDA made by a Taiwanese company called HTC.

  15. #15
    Senior Member
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Location
    Somerset
    Posts
    3,217
    Thanks
    0
    Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts
    Another thing I didn't know! Thanks IanR...

    None of the other networks actually work in this immediate area - and even O2 isn't wonderful !
    Just Singin' the Blues ........



Similar Threads

  1. Placing a bet on mobile
    By george in forum General Racing Topics
    Replies: 6
    Last Post: 5th September 2012, 11:10 AM
  2. New Mobile Skin
    By dvds2000 in forum General Racing Topics
    Replies: 17
    Last Post: 1st July 2010, 6:46 PM
  3. Mobile broadband
    By Desert Orchid in forum Chit Chat
    Replies: 7
    Last Post: 17th March 2010, 12:32 PM
  4. Betfair mobile
    By firstpastthepost in forum General Racing Topics
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 19th January 2009, 9:05 PM
  5. Betfair Mobile
    By Melendez in forum General Racing Topics
    Replies: 6
    Last Post: 8th January 2008, 1:49 PM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •