laptop help please.,.

[sofa----king]

ok pc  whizz kids i need some help please.,.,.
here goes,i live in cyprus and have a,,,,,,,,, Toshiba U200-115 Laptop small notebook,,,,,,
and want to conect to the internet  away from my home,i used to have a vodaphone little mousey looking thing for this but it was really expensive £300--£400 a month so that stopped pretty quick,
is there a phone i can get now that can do this?
i seen on a post on this site you can do it with a nokia n95??
i have a apple i phone that is locked over here and am thinking of getting it unlocked to all networks in cyprus
(its only £50 to get it unlocked) if i do this will this work with laptop to get online???
or chop the i phone in and get a nokia n95???
thanks for any help with this,im just chit when it comes to this stuff.....................

[RichEO]

iphone is not 3G so will be slow. You can use most phones as a modem though.

Why was the vodafone so expensive, was it a UK one you were roaming with? Was it PAYG? A 3G PC card will be cheap, just seen an offer that vodafone are now doing 3GB / month for £15. I'm paying near £30 for the same thing.

[Longines]

MTN appear to be the only Cypriot network that have a 3G infrastructure. The costs are listed here:

http://www.mtn.com.cy/index.cfm/id/52/lang/english/mtnmobileusbmodem

It's €34.15+VAT a month for "unlimited" data [1GB/month fair use limit] and somewhere between free and €196 to buy the modem depending on the length of contract you sign up to.

If you have a 3g phone (like the N95 or many others) you could use it instead of the dedicated 3G modem but the dedicated route will be much simpler to configure.

It looks like their 3G is 'first generation' - you'll get a max of 384kb/s. That's 7 times faster than dial-up but slower than most broadband offerings. Still perfectly adequate for mail, surfing and poker though.

[sofa----king]

iphone is not 3G so will be slow. You can use most phones as a modem though.

Why was the vodafone so expensive, was it a UK one you were roaming with? Was it PAYG? A 3G PC card will be cheap, just seen an offer that vodafone are now doing 3GB / month for £15. I'm paying near £30 for the same thing.

i was on a contract of £30 per month for the voaphone internet modem thing,but the bill for this was 1st month £280 second month £330,they said it was because i was out of the country and offered no help,so im just stuck with the contract so gave it to my sister in the uk for the next 9 months ,,,,

[sofa----king]

can i just buy a nokia n95 and conect on a pay as you go sim card?
sorry for being daft but im not pc minded to be honest thanks ...

[RichEO]

You COULD buy an N95 for £350, and use PAYG at £3/MB.

There are plenty of phones you can use as a modem, it doesn't need to be an N95! But using a phone as a modem has various downsides. You either need to plug it in with a cable when you need it, or keep it connected via bluetooth, keep it charged up. A 3G card stuck in your laptop is the best option.

Just buy a 3G card for £25 off ebay and get whatever 3G contract you can in Cyprus.

[Longines]

can i just buy a nokia n95 and conect on a pay as you go sim card?
sorry for being daft but im not pc minded to be honest thanks ...

You can but the cost is stupid: MTN charge €3,670 per GB of data on PAYG - that's not a typo. CYTA charge €2,516 per GB.

The only sensible route is to sign up to a MTN Unlimited Data bundle and either buy their USB modem or use a 3G phone and a cable/bluetooth. To be honest, if you're not PC minded go for the USB modem.

[RED-DOG]

just seen an offer that vodafone are now doing 3GB / month for £15. I'm paying near £30 for the same thing.

I was in the same boat Rich, with 6 months to go on my contract. I rang them and got them to put me on the £15 tarriff in exchange signing for 18 months.

[Bongo]

I got unlimited web for free with my new mobile contract, obviously I enquired what the fair usage policy was only to be told there wasn't one (happy days!) however it was subject to an excessive usage policy (obv too many people caught on to the fair usage thing).

Found some instructions on the O2 site for setting up my laptop to use the web from the phone, so will try that next (and check i'm not being charged £3k a GB for the privilege!)

Might be a way for people to save some money - especially if it's only for a backup!

[RED-DOG]

Does the phone use it's own battery, or that of the computer?|

[Bongo]

It's own - although it's probably possible to charge it by USB.