Dongles

Yet another occasion where you the poor reader looks at  Pip's Blog and thinks "What the hell is this guy on about now? "

Easy to explain. Just follow along and maybe you will learn something to your advantage.

I sometimes need a laptop, well truthfully I don't need one, I want one, I like precise talk.

But it would be good to have a laptop present for MASTT meetings now we are entering our next phase of development, we are looking at becoming a Ltd company, or should I call it "incorporation" ?, damn but I have come to hate that word.

We want to make ourselves more effiecient, using proper meeting stuff like minutes and agendas , which we do do  but haven't always managed to do everytime in the past.

We need to make ourselves more accountable and thats where a laptop comes in for me. I can do minutes, I can type those things, and then the minutes and agendas for a future meeting could be posted to e-mail addresses very quickly. Maybe they'd be delivered straight after a meeting before an attendee could even get home.

Well you've seen the adverts on TV for a free laptop computer surely, the freebie comes with a deal for a mobile phone connection so you can use it anywhere that there's moblie phone masts and coverage.

The trouble is the price.

They cost between £25 and £40 per month and you're tied into a contract for 18-24 months typically.

I've been looking at these offers covetously, I want one, although I don't want to pay for a laptop that costs peanuts in real money and is inflated up to a hideous price.

Do the Maths, say you take the laptop @ £30 per month for a contract period of 18 months,

 thats £30 x 18 = £540, and thats with a contract too so it'll probably be hell to wiggle out of if you find it don't work so well orquite how you want.

Thats £540, when the laptop can be bought for possibly £300 at retail prices, when we gotta know that the laptop possibly costs a fraction of that price . Thats an awful lotta money for a mobile phone connection for the 18 months.

So I was telling this story to AR when I saw her today and she started telling me about--------------Dongles.

It turns out AR's sister has one.

Yep there's a gadget on the market called a dongle.

It plugs into the back of a laptop computer, well actually it plugs into the USB port, and gives the laptop a mobile phone connection. You buy one of these Dongles with a smaller contract, yep heres the link folks for Dongles

http://www.top10-broadband.co.uk/guides/what_is_a_mobile_dongle/#

You buy these little gadgets with a cheaper contract than if you were going for the "free laptop", you need to buy a laptop instead but if you shop around it could eb as cheap as you want it to be.

Hell, laptops sell for £200-£1000 depending on what specs you want on the machine. but if like me you go for a cheapish machine and a " Dongle " you could after the purchase of the machine only be left with a reasonably priced contract for the Dongle.

Come on check it out. I'm going to be hcecking this new gadget out. Heck I'm a sucker for new gadgets.

But this could be my best buy ever. And then I could be blogging from work or the train into town, or the garden.

I could be downing tools and grabbing the laptop to chat to you lovely folks out there in blogland. Imagine that