The Personal Hot Spot: The Future of Me
I just read about a cool service being offered by Avis: For a charge of $11 a day, your car will come with a new device called Autonet Mobile WiFi router. The gadget is the size of a paperback book, plugs into an AC power adapter, and delivers encrypted WiFi within a 100-foot radius.
I haven’t used this, so I can’t testify as to how well it works. One review says the service isn’t as fast as cable or DSL, but it does work seamlessly as your car travels from cell tower to cell tower, better than current proprietary mobile broadband services. Multiple users can log on from different computers and surf away. You can also take it into your hotel room, plug it in with supplied AC power cord, and avoid paying those troublesome $10-a-day Internet service charges.
Sounds like a good things for photographers on quick assignments. But more interesting to me is the future that gizmo’s like this promise: A world where everyone walks around in her or his own personal hotspot, each of us plugged into whatever information or entertainment source we want, all the time.
--David Schonauer
$11 a day to Avis or $11 a day to Hilton?? Not much different.
If you need occasional mobile connectivity, from multiple system (computer, ipod touch, Eye.Fi) then it's a great appliance.
If you need mobile connectivity all the time, it would be far cheaper to get a WAN card from your cellular carrier to put in your laptop and let it bridge the connection to provide wifi access.
Posted by: JohnO | January 31, 2008 at 04:55 PM