There was a post a few months ago about how to use the iPhone to connect your laptop up to the internet. It was not an easy checkbox task and likely it would break once you upgraded the software on the phone.

Anyone looking in to that and has found an easier way way to do it? We have iPhone 3.1and 10.6.1 with new features. This would be a nice hidden feature.

tia

It's a feature supported in other countries... but AT&T has only "promised" that feature "later this year".

Unless it's a hack that you are referring to...

For a while, I was looking into tethering. It turned out that I didn't end up spending working days at the beach or in a park like I had idealized and my BlackBerry's Edge connection is too slow to do anything but e-mail.

Anyhow, I thought it would be cool to try to pick up one of those USB dongles second hand and use that. Are you thinking of using a mobile Internet connection regularly or seasonally?

I still think it would be cool to have a USB thinggy that I could activate only for the summer months.

I had one of those USB thingy from ClearWire - they worked great for internet and email , anything like YouTube it choked on and most times not play at all .

You do have to plan a monthly rate for it

Neither, more like once or twice a month I get an email while I am just iPhone and I really need to type a page or two.

I am spending my workdays at the beach and for the most part the iPhone does the job. In fact I like it more than having laptop connectivity since I am not tempted to jump over and solve the problem six ways. With the iPhone I just do it in a sentence and get back to the fishing.

The pdaNet requires jail breaking the phone. Since the Institute paid for it I don't think I can bust it and I don't want to put up with the hassle of not upgrading or jail breaking after each upgrade. The whole point is adding leisure time not adding screwing around with software.

Paying 360 a year extra is just too much for a rare email or google search. So the solution is likely to just use the iPhone the way it was supposed to be used, as a phone.

There's a dongle-type thingy that the guys at work plug into their laptops when they're traveling to connect to the Internet. They all fight over it, and get upset if someone signs it out before they do, so it must work pretty well. I'll have to ask the IT guy what it is.

Tethering quickly kills the phone battery anyway, unless you're in a car or building and can have it plugged into a charger.

Yeah, I kept reading that the battery was used up when tethering. Even if you are plugged into a charger the iPhone loses power. The phone isn't much use if it's dead.

I guess I just need to learn to type faster on the iPhone keyboard. I just learned that the spacebar hit twice puts down a period and a space. Doh. I also have the iPhone add "Sent by handheld" after my sig to explain the typos. I have the autocorrrect turned off since it usually screws up text and doesn't fix it. I need a typing tutorial for the iPhone

Seems odd to me the phone would lose power when plugged in. Those portable "mifi" devices you see now will connect 5 netbooks on battery for 4 hours.