A Step Further from the Luddites

I've been accused by one of my friends of being a Luddite which I find a bit hard to believe. There's enough geek-speak in this post to get me kicked out of any Luddite convention! The kids (can you call someone who's 40 a kid?) complain about the speed of the Internet connection at the house (which has been based on DSL for the past 10 years) but they don't call me a Luddite.

Last week we suffered from multiple connectivity outages. That, combined with a desire for faster service at a better price and better connectivity when we travel, led to a Friday morning order of a 3G/4G hotspot from Millenicom. Chris & Cherie, who live, work, and travel in a 50 year old GMC bus have been singing their praises for a long time and I can see why.

This little gizmo showed up in the mail today.  It's a NovaTel 4620 "MiFi" using data services from the Verizon network that Millenicom resells at a much more competitive price.

The battery charged while we were fixing dinner and then we fired it up and set up all the wireless enabled devices in the house to recognize it as their primary access.  Then we turned off and unplugged the DSL modem & wireless router.  A couple phone calls is all it is going to take to move our land-line phone & DSL service, and our expensive but poor performing ISP to the "remember when" category.   No more land line - hope it means fewer political calls at dinner time!

The advantage is that we can take it with us when we travel.  The disadvantage to our sometimes house-sitting daughter is that we'll take it with us when we travel!