New phone as modem for laptop
It’s nice to discover things you didn’t know about. Even better when they have a practical benefit.
My new HTC phone is 3G and can access the Internet at quite good speeds. I initially thought that I’d have little or no use for this function as the included web site content was pretty basic ; a handful of news summaries, movie times, even horoscopes (!) Yes it can access other sites, but the small screen makes it a bit difficult.
But but but. An icon called Internet Sharing changed all that.
Basically it goes like this:
- Laptop has no Internet connection. You can be sitting in your car or visiting someone etc.
- Connect Mobile Phone to Laptop (USB cable or even Bluetooth)
- Start Internet Sharing on Phone
- Laptop says “okay connecting to Internet via Phone”
- On the Laptop, browse and email away to any site
I can see a use for this straight away. A few places I visit – including running training at my local library – have limited Internet access. So I may not be able to ‘see’ the very site I’m trying to teach about ; like Gmail, Google Reader or Flickr. Their firewall or proxy server is doing this.
So I just use the phone as modem.
Another benefit, particularly when visiting a customer, is that I’m not on their network either. So good for security reasons too.
