Do you tether? Are you stupid?
Now before you go and get yourself tied up in knots over that title let me state that I love tethering and find it very useful. That’s why I was quite surprised and taken aback by an article posted by Mike Elgan recently on Computerworld that sets out to prove Why tethering is stupid and unnecessary. Before you start lobbing hate grenades at Mr. Elgan read through his article and see where he’s coming from.
First up what is tethering exactly? We hear that term a lot and some folks I know have no idea what it means. Tethering is the act of connecting your smartphone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile or other, to your laptop so you can get connected to the Internet without the benefit of WiFi. Many smartphones today have 3G connectivity and it can be used to get a laptop onto the web by connecting them to the notebook. This can be done by a USB cable or even wirelessly via Bluetooth. It can be the difference between not being able to connect to the web and getting some work done and I find it pretty darn useful.
What Elgan is stating in his article is he finds the tethering process itself to be awkward and clumsy and not worth the effort most of the time. I don’t find it to be that way myself once the connection is set up the first time subsequent connections are relatively pain-free for me.
The Computerworld article is really a slam at the pricing practices of the US phone carriers that are "greedy" and make tethering necessary at all. Mr. Elgan wants to see cheap easy connectivity for everyone no matter what, and who can argue with that? So how about you? Do you tether and how do you find the process?
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I tether all the time. I am a small business owner and I dont use the internet all that much, just for light web surfing and email, so i see no need in paying for internet at my shop so i just tether. I am with alltel and there speeds are great in my area, also we have a small lake house near branson and tethering allows us to have internet there without paying for another line. So i belive tethering to be a very important feature for me.
I tether on occasion, but I’m not stupid. I use Netshare on my iPhone to tether via wifi, sidestepping Elgan’s problems with Bluetooth and USB. It is somewhat of a chore on the PC side with TCP/IP and proxy settings, but not bad.
I tether once in a while, and I don’t find it to be a pain. Using WinMo, I can do either USB, BT or WiFi, so after the initial setup, everything is quite painless.
However, I will agree with Elgan on one point. There shouldn’t be any reason why one can’t have several 3G “connections” all linked to a single account or profile. Much like how they have “Family packs” where everyone shares the same pool of minutes, everyone should also be able to share the same bucket’o'data.
I did when I had my Blackberry, but now having an Iphone – no need to. When I did I found it useful but I have to agree that the price they charge just to tether was to much…greed greed greed.
I also tether but I’m not going to pay extra for it, I use Netshare. ATT is looking at trying to charge you an extra $30 dollars a month for “tethering”, screw them. Why teather at all?
I’m often at business locations where getting out of the corporate network is a pain or it’s filtered or it’s totaly blocked.
If you have ever tried to get on a public wifi it’s ether not available or not trust worthy.
My phone let’s me get around all that trouble.
On T-Mobile UK permission to tether only costs £5 more than the £7.50 for the ‘unlimited’ data plan, and boosts your soft limit up to 3GB, so I think thats a pretty good deal.
At work my HSDPA is much faster than the shared wifi everyone else is using, so I think it works out pretty well.
And of course on HTC’s latest WM devices (the HTC Touch Pro in my case) tethering is a no-brainer – you plug the USB cord in, and it asks you if you want to share your internet, and thats all you have to do.
I just got the Saga last night and had it tethered in minutes. Now that its set up I can set up the connection in less than a minute, USB or BT. I pay the 15 per month tether charge, because I don’t want it cut off if I am doing something important or show up somewhere and not have it work because they caught me. Seems like this guy just wants a headline.
Windows Mobile on an upgraded T-Mobile Dash with the $20 a month unlimited internet plan. I tether my phone whenever I need internet and there’s not a reliable hotspot available. It’s easy and just works. It’s slow by comparison to a good hotspot, but I’ve had better connections tethered than in some of the hotels I’ve stayed at.
It supports VPN back to the office using the standard windows VPN, and I’ve been amazed at the quality of remote desktop sessions.
My plan includes the T-Mobile hotspots. So I’ve been reasonably happy with the situation.
i am in the usa curently i have been for 2 years. a friend introduce me to sprint SERO. i pay 30 per month for unlimited internet. you say t-mobile has unlimited for 20$? how can i get?
Honestly – getting connected via BT or USB tethering with my Nokia E61i using the Nokia Suite is easier and faster than setting up and connecting via a new Wifi profile in most cases! What’s amazing is how difficult most phone manufacturers make it, yet how easy Nokia has made it in spite of Window’s general cantankerous networking schemes. I can be tethered online within about 7 seconds over BT or USB with this phone (with T-mo USA if anyone cares).
Now, if only it were as easy and idiot-proof to connect my WinMo6.1 phone for tethering.
Tethering is so simple i don’t why more people don not do it. In the past I have used usb and blutooth. Now it’s even easier with WM wifi router. There are numerous ways to tether. the easiest is using a dial up connection.