Laptop
So what is a dongle? Generally a dongle is a rather geeky word for a gadget that plugs into a USB port – one of the thin, oblong-shaped holes in the side of a laptop.
But the dongles currently taking mobile phone shops by storm, and which have almost overnight brought the word into common parlance, are chewing-gum packet-sized (or sometimes slightly bigger) gizmos that connect your laptop to broadband-speed internet wirelessly, via the mobile phone network.
Dongles aren’t particularly blinding in techie terms, but they work well and could transform your internet use. You don’t have to be a business executive in a hurry to benefit from the dongle revolution, although they are exceptionally handy if you are on a train and need to see some vital presentation or spreadsheet.
You can equally enjoy dongling (not a real word but it would be fun to try to insinuate it into the language) if, for example, you have a second home, holiday unit or caravan where you don’t have a phone line. They are also useful if you want to get on to the internet from hotel rooms without paying scandalous charges of up to £15 a day, or if you fancy sitting in your local catching up with email, online shopping or reading the news without buying a paper.
If you have been put off mobile internet use by scary stories about the high price of browsing on your phone, be assured that dongles are being pushed by high street chains precisely because they offer truly affordable web access via phone networks.
The phone company 3, for example, which has gone guns blazing into dongles even more fiercely than its competitors, offers impressive deals, and competition between the five networks ensures that prices are constantly falling.
As with all things mobile phone-related, the details are horribly complicated and change almost weekly, so it’s best to check when you plan to buy. But go to an independent shop that sells products from all the networks rather than a single-network store; for instance the Phones4U chain stocks a wide variety of dongles.
At the time of writing, a 3 dongle comes with 1Gb of data for £10. This equates to 700 hours of web surfing a month, or sending and receiving 1,000 emails and surfing for a reduced 650 hours a month. Should you need more than that, £15 a month will get you 3Gb of data, or 2,100 hours of internet access a month.
If you have a contract for your dongle (it counts as a separate mobile phone line, remember) and go over your allowance, the cost will appear on your bill. If you get a Pay As You Go dongle, you can top it up in the usual complex way.
Foreign usage is inevitably a minefield, but one where the mines are relatively benign. Again, it varies network to network and with different times and offers but, taking 3 as an example, if you are in a country where the company operates (which includes Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Sweden and Norway) it costs the same as in the UK. Outside the 3 zone, you may find yourself charged as much as £3 to £6 per Mb (not Gb) which is red danger alert territory.
How fast are dongles? In general terms, surprisingly so, depending on what the network offers and, crucially, where you are. On paper, Orange seems the quickest at a claimed 7.2 Mbps (Megabits per second) – faster than almost any home broadband. Vodafone offers, at the time of writing, 3.6 Mbps and 3, 2.8 Mbps.
What does this actually mean? If you are in an area which has 3G coverage on your network (3G is a type of network – not the same as 3, the phone company) it will be as fast as a sluggish broadband connection. If you are within reach of the enhanced 3G known as HSDPA you will get internet use as fast as you do at home.
A final tip, though. Manage your expectations. You will often get lucky and find yourself in that pub garden surfing away at warp speed. But more often, especially in the country or on a train, it will be more like the speed we used to get from 56K modems.
* This article first appeared in the June 2008 edition of Saga Magazine. Details correct at time of publication. Jonathan Margolis writes the technology column 'One Foot In the Future' every month in Saga Magazine.