Blackberry as a Modem

[Melbosa]

I know some of the guys at the office have this working for telus blackberries, but mine is Rogers.  Well found a great little tutorial to get this to work, so if you guys know anyone who wants to do this, check this out:

http://www.blackberryforums.com/blackberry-guides/2019-user-howto-use-blackberry-modem-laptop.html

[Lazybones]

And and after ten seconds of REAL web browsing your bill would be over $100 for the data alone, unless your company has a TRUE  unlimited plan agreement.

[Melbosa]

NAIT has stated that this is one of the purposes we can utilize the Blackberry for.  As far as I understand this would be part of our Data stream billing, which we use for surfing the web on our blackberries as well as our message receiving.  Cova knows better, and am sure could correct the previous statement.

In a pinch, if you really needed information from your work computers, or needed to support something remotely, this is handy if you are on the road or camping (as long as you have cell coverage).

[Cova]

Yes - pretty much everything a Blackberry does involves cell data transfer.  The blackberries own traffic though (e-mail, calendar, even browsing from the device) is very efficient and is all optimized and compressed by the BES server before going over the wireless network.  Most of those optimizations would not apply if using it as a modem for a laptop, and you will go through your data usage MUCH faster.  But ya - if it's for work purposes (eg. you're out of town and need to VPN in to fix something) NAIT will cover it.  Though you'll need a better excuse than you were too lazy to walk to the basement for your real workstation Melbosa   I think you probably have a 5MB / month data allowance.

[Melbosa]

LOL no way... laziness needs to be covered .  Yeah I was thinking if I was out of town or something where there isn't any internet.  The speed is only about 2.5 times dial-up (56K), so it isn't great speed to be working with.

[Thorin]

Internet's available almost everywhere, these days.  Unless you're driving down a highway (and even then, we've gotten connections before).  But you shouldn't be driving down the highway and trying to work at the same time...

[Lazybones]

Actually I find it surprisingly hard to find FREE WiFi spots.

[Tom]

I was downtown and at WestEd a couple weeks back, and had totally forgot about my trials with dswifi

Downtown (churchhill square) has at least one FREE open hotspot, and WestEd has at least one NETWORK free and open. Don't bother with Wem's if you don't have to. Theres another there that's free and open.

[Thorin]

Yes, free's hard to find unless you're staying at *any* hotel.  But using the Blackberry isn't free either, is it?

[Melbosa]

As Cova/Lazy explained it is part of your data stream in your contract.  So if you only get 5MB of data stream then you pay for extra data usage.  So no it isn't free, but in a pinch it can be used, and is a nice option if you need it.  May come in handy for me when I'm out on a camping trip or ball tournament and NAIT needs something from my email or me to fix something when Cova isn't around.  Just thought I would post it here encase anyone else has one with their companies .

[Lazybones]

My 6700 can be tethered as a modem via USB or act as a WiFi to EVDO bridge but I pay for my own data right now so it is unlikely I will use that feature.