A couple of weeks ago, Samba broadband folded.
At least they didn't exactly FOLD.
What they did was to stop the service and email everyone to tell them that they had ceased trading.
They actually are still a company and apparently are running in another country but as far as the UK is concerned, they are no more.
Their email pretty much said that they could not negotiate future prices to be as competitive as they had previously been doing and so they were stopping .
I actually expected the broadband credit that I had accrued, to continue to work because I had earned that previously and as far as I was concerned, that would have been earned and credited to my dongle (run under subcontract presumably with Three mobile broadband) .
That is not the case however and my dongle which I hammered hard all day on the closing day to at least use up some of my credit (I had 15 GB saved on it) now does not connect to the internet with Three . I can get on Three's site but I apparently have no credit.
I guess I managed to use about 800 mb that last day.
Thanks Samba! You apparently did not actually have any kind of agreement then with the members but only with Three whom you decided not to pay out of your profits from my and a few thousand other peoples viewing of your adverts.
My 15 GB of non expirable credit stayed in Samba's pocket along with the major earning they got from all my viewing of adverts.
To put it into perspective, each video was 3.5mb that works out that I watched 4388 advertising videos.
A while ago I worked out that we were paid about 1.5 pence a video and so they had 65.82 of my earnings because they just wiped it out on closure.
Plus at least 65.82 they also earned as profit because lets face it, they weren't a charity, I think it was most likely more than that but so what?
I did email to ask about it but they only have an automated reply stating they are so sorry but they have closed due to mean old Three not letting them have such good prices any more.
I am one of the lucky ones.
My Sim cost me £1 and my dongle was free as we unlocked one we got from somewhere else.
Some poor saps had only just bought a Samba Dongle, literally the day before their 'closure' and some people were using their regular 'top up' with cash .
They stated they would reimburse the cash top ups if they had been bought in that month .
Anyway..
I was not impressed by the deceit. They could easily have put up a message online to say they were closing and people would have used up their 'credit' and no one would have ordered more top up credit or bought a dongle for nothing.
If you are in a different country and Samba is offering free broadband for watching their adverts, think carefully about it before deciding to go ahead and certainly be very wary about actually buying anything from them with 'real money'.
.
Showing posts with label mobile phones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mobile phones. Show all posts
Tuesday, 13 May 2014
Monday, 9 September 2013
Free mobile phone use,broadband use and cheap texting
I have been looking at my mobile phone usage and decided that I could use Ovivomobile for their freedom package.
I didn't like Orange,they messed up all the time.
The website was buggy and they charged an arm and a leg for data use if you didn't top up your phone every month which I never do,so my credit would whoosh away just for a quick look on a search engine taking only a minute or two.
I already have samba mobile for free broadband on my computer.
[[UPDATED TO ADD OVIVO HAVE NOW GONE OUT OF BUSINESS SO DISREGARD THIS BIT MARCH 20TH 2014 ]]
OVIVO supply a sim for £15 and when it arrives and you put it in your mobile phone, it adds £15 of credit so basically the sim is free.
Then you are allocated..
For free each month
Then when your allocated free credits are all used you can still call anyone else who is on ovivo for free or if you are wanting to call other numbers you can top up with real money or just wait for the new months free credits or just go for one of their paid for tariffs which are quite cheap too.
If you port over your existing number by requesting your FREE PAC code from your old supplier they give an additional £3 of credit.
You shouldn't have any trrouble getting your PAC code as they must give it to you by law in the UK.
They also do an ovivo data sim (750mb free a month) which I believe is £15 with the same amount added to your account as credit.
You can have as many sims as you want as you pay for each one so you could have 2 dongles to get 1.5gb a month or two sims for your phone (would have different numbers of course)or two phones and get two lots of the free phone credits.
If you use your phone a bit more than I do and have an older phone knocking around, this would work out very cheap indeed over a year...
2 phone sims, £30 one off payment would give you every month
300 mins talk time
500 texts
1gb of data
2 Data sims ,£30 one off payment would give you every month
I have been waiting to change to OVIVO for a while because I still had about £7 credit on orange but then I found FISHTEXT which is an online texting thing. You can pay for the texts with mobile phone credit (eat that,orange) and allocate your mobile number when joining.
Then you can text from your PC or using the app on your mobile and the texts are 2p
International texts are very cheap .
They give you 20p credit (0.30euros) for joining so you can try it out (10 standard uk to uk texts)
Texts to other FISHTEXT members are free using the PC or a wifi signal on you mobile or the free data from ovivo and their app is very low data usage anyway.
Any replies go to the mobile whose number you have used for your member number.
You can also pay to have a phone number online without needing a mobile phone at all.
The texts are cheap and they can be used internationally with a price guide being shown for each option and length of text when actually texting.
So for a bit of hunting around, I now have a free monthly mobile 'rolling tariff' with £18 of credit
Plus a £5.20 credit on Fishtext
(£23.20 for the cost of £20) a 16% profit :P
without the Fishtext add on credit £5 it would have been £18.20 for the cost of £15 (a 21.33% profit)
These two things would be ideal for a student who must pay for their own phone and internet.
If you and your friends joined FishText the texts from your pc would be free according to their bumph.
Join Samba mobile to get free broadband to use with it or additionally.
Join ovivo and have free texts and calls and mobile data
Get someone to buy you the samba sim an ovivo phone sim and an ovivo data sim (750MB free a month) for your birthday or xmas and you will have lots of free broadband and phone data.
Get yourself a copy of joikuspot for your phone and use the phone data to get wifi on either a tablet or PC
Log into samba mobile website whenever there is free wifi available (maybe in a takeaway or cafe,a library with wifi,uni) and watch the adverts to keep your account topped up with data.
Use the dongle or your tethered(joikuspot) phone to run skype so you can instantly message your family at home when you are away. The messaging bit of Skype uses very low data.
Then if after all that, you still run out of calls and texts etc, you can still have your family ring you,because phones work both ways and you don't pay to accept incoming calls or texts,only outgoing.
Incidentally, I have been topping up my SAMBA SIM every day by watching the adverts I haven't used the data much, we got it for our ten day trip away in the spring (I think I bought it at the end of Feb for £1 using a code from moneysavingexpert and used an old dongle I unlocked free)when it was used daily and it has been used about 3 or 4 times when the home wifi was being glitchy. (about 2gb usage all together maybe)
I have 7.8gb sitting on it waiting for my next bigger outing.
If you were going to be off to uni next year and bought a sim now or asked for one for a present, you could accrue a lot of data on it in the time you are at home and avoid paying for the internet when you are away
If you want to get yourself one, you can click on my referral link here to save yourself £2.50
http://www.sambamobile.com/Signup/BecomeMember?memberKey=0x5C0A8DD4F4DDB8E7FC6D4BD659FB8AD5
And the sim will be £2.50 instead of £5 or a dongle with a sim will be £22.50 instead of £25
I haven't got a referral to share for OVIVO because it would be my name and phone number which obviously I'm not going to broadcast to strangers on the internet.
Fishtext is also not really a referral based thing. click here to get to their page or just search the name
I didn't like Orange,they messed up all the time.
The website was buggy and they charged an arm and a leg for data use if you didn't top up your phone every month which I never do,so my credit would whoosh away just for a quick look on a search engine taking only a minute or two.
I already have samba mobile for free broadband on my computer.
[[UPDATED TO ADD OVIVO HAVE NOW GONE OUT OF BUSINESS SO DISREGARD THIS BIT MARCH 20TH 2014 ]]
OVIVO supply a sim for £15 and when it arrives and you put it in your mobile phone, it adds £15 of credit so basically the sim is free.
Then you are allocated..
- 150 mins of talk time
- 250 texts
- 500mb Data
For free each month
Then when your allocated free credits are all used you can still call anyone else who is on ovivo for free or if you are wanting to call other numbers you can top up with real money or just wait for the new months free credits or just go for one of their paid for tariffs which are quite cheap too.
If you port over your existing number by requesting your FREE PAC code from your old supplier they give an additional £3 of credit.
You shouldn't have any trrouble getting your PAC code as they must give it to you by law in the UK.
They also do an ovivo data sim (750mb free a month) which I believe is £15 with the same amount added to your account as credit.
You can have as many sims as you want as you pay for each one so you could have 2 dongles to get 1.5gb a month or two sims for your phone (would have different numbers of course)or two phones and get two lots of the free phone credits.
If you use your phone a bit more than I do and have an older phone knocking around, this would work out very cheap indeed over a year...
2 phone sims, £30 one off payment would give you every month
300 mins talk time
500 texts
1gb of data
2 Data sims ,£30 one off payment would give you every month
1.5gb data
That is very cheap over a year when compared with the yearly PAYG tariffs of other companies.
Of course the longer you use it for ,the cheaper it would be .
So if your uni course was 3 years and you bought two sims of each kind(£60 all together) ,it would be £20 a year for phone and internet.
They don't provide the sims or phones in that price plan .
You can pick up very cheap unlocked phones and dongles on ebay or ask family for their spares.
Ovivo sims work in Nokia's symbian phones as well as apple and android and window phones.
The only criteria seems to be a phone that can get 3G and needs to be unlocked.
I have been waiting to change to OVIVO for a while because I still had about £7 credit on orange but then I found FISHTEXT which is an online texting thing. You can pay for the texts with mobile phone credit (eat that,orange) and allocate your mobile number when joining.
Then you can text from your PC or using the app on your mobile and the texts are 2p
International texts are very cheap .
They give you 20p credit (0.30euros) for joining so you can try it out (10 standard uk to uk texts)
Texts to other FISHTEXT members are free using the PC or a wifi signal on you mobile or the free data from ovivo and their app is very low data usage anyway.
Any replies go to the mobile whose number you have used for your member number.
You can also pay to have a phone number online without needing a mobile phone at all.
The texts are cheap and they can be used internationally with a price guide being shown for each option and length of text when actually texting.
So for a bit of hunting around, I now have a free monthly mobile 'rolling tariff' with £18 of credit
Plus a £5.20 credit on Fishtext
(£23.20 for the cost of £20) a 16% profit :P
without the Fishtext add on credit £5 it would have been £18.20 for the cost of £15 (a 21.33% profit)
These two things would be ideal for a student who must pay for their own phone and internet.
If you and your friends joined FishText the texts from your pc would be free according to their bumph.
Join Samba mobile to get free broadband to use with it or additionally.
Join ovivo and have free texts and calls and mobile data
Get someone to buy you the samba sim an ovivo phone sim and an ovivo data sim (750MB free a month) for your birthday or xmas and you will have lots of free broadband and phone data.
Get yourself a copy of joikuspot for your phone and use the phone data to get wifi on either a tablet or PC
Log into samba mobile website whenever there is free wifi available (maybe in a takeaway or cafe,a library with wifi,uni) and watch the adverts to keep your account topped up with data.
Use the dongle or your tethered(joikuspot) phone to run skype so you can instantly message your family at home when you are away. The messaging bit of Skype uses very low data.
Then if after all that, you still run out of calls and texts etc, you can still have your family ring you,because phones work both ways and you don't pay to accept incoming calls or texts,only outgoing.
Incidentally, I have been topping up my SAMBA SIM every day by watching the adverts I haven't used the data much, we got it for our ten day trip away in the spring (I think I bought it at the end of Feb for £1 using a code from moneysavingexpert and used an old dongle I unlocked free)when it was used daily and it has been used about 3 or 4 times when the home wifi was being glitchy. (about 2gb usage all together maybe)
I have 7.8gb sitting on it waiting for my next bigger outing.
If you were going to be off to uni next year and bought a sim now or asked for one for a present, you could accrue a lot of data on it in the time you are at home and avoid paying for the internet when you are away
If you want to get yourself one, you can click on my referral link here to save yourself £2.50
http://www.sambamobile.com/Signup/BecomeMember?memberKey=0x5C0A8DD4F4DDB8E7FC6D4BD659FB8AD5
And the sim will be £2.50 instead of £5 or a dongle with a sim will be £22.50 instead of £25
I haven't got a referral to share for OVIVO because it would be my name and phone number which obviously I'm not going to broadcast to strangers on the internet.
Fishtext is also not really a referral based thing. click here to get to their page or just search the name
Tuesday, 9 April 2013
Internet on the go
How does Samba mobile broadband perform?
If you remember, I said I had joined Samba broadband.
This is a clever idea of theirs.
The company sells you a sim or a sim and a dongle.
You watch adverts on line and the adverts earn you megabytes. Each advert is 3.5 mb.
You can top up with money if you think you would run out but the money top ups are for 30 days straight . The advert megabytes last until you use them. I had just over 1.5 gigabytes in 21 days of membership.
We took several unlocked dongles with us. Samba uses 3 network in the UK.
I used a lot less than I expected due to the enormity of our task and the lack of time. In all,I only used 289 megabytes. This was mainly emails, a few small surveys and some general browsing,I did watch some short videos on nectar adpoints too. I used a Hi link Dongle that can work at 21mbps.
However,despite the comfortable feeling of being able to stay on line, I was disappointed to find that Samba adverts are almost non existent when connecting through their sim.
I had only one advert for most days and 2 on one or two days.
That meant that although the adverts watched while using the dongle did not deplete the amount I can use, they were pitifully inadequate if I had needed to have more than the small amount of web access I actually used.
If I had only been able to access via the dongle for say a month and we had not been so busy, I would have probably run out with my only option being to top up with money.
I suppose that one could go into burger restaurants or any of the other places where you can surf with their wifi while drinking a cup of tea and watch the adverts there, to be sure of getting enough to keep your account topped up when no wifi is available but it would need some dedication and determination.
Students would no doubt find this useful and for the very few times that we will need mobile broadband,so will I.
When we stayed at the youth hostel,broadband access was 50 pence for 30 minutes which seems expensive,I would use Samba in preference to that.
They could improve the idea enormously if they had a mobile phone page in which the adverts were accessible as they are on home Internet .
I did try to access their page via my phone browser. UCee browser could access the page but could not view the videos and nor could opera mini or the built in nokia browser(I think based on firefox).
For one thing it is easier to carry a mobile phone with you and you have much more chance of accessing free wifi simply because of the small format.
Secondly, a mobile phone is less alluring to thieves than a laptop would be so turning up in the same spot every day to top up your adverts would be less likely to gain notice .
I say page rather than App because an App is Operating system specific (unless java or python and still it would rely on a phone being able to handle those languages).
A mobile page can be seen by any mobile browser.
My other option for internet access was Joikuspot as my phones are all Nokia and that is a Nokia specific app as far as I know. This app worked perfectly although I hardly used it. It was very useful before I got the dongle to see the Samba sim and still go to the log in page (it needed to restart) . I used it a couple of times when I wanted something very quickly rather than find the dongle and let it start up.
My poor DD was about a week without Internet due to having to end her agreement when moving. DH had his phone for tethering (we discovered it is allowed on his tariff ,else he would have used my options).
If you remember, I said I had joined Samba broadband.
This is a clever idea of theirs.
The company sells you a sim or a sim and a dongle.
You watch adverts on line and the adverts earn you megabytes. Each advert is 3.5 mb.
You can top up with money if you think you would run out but the money top ups are for 30 days straight . The advert megabytes last until you use them. I had just over 1.5 gigabytes in 21 days of membership.
We took several unlocked dongles with us. Samba uses 3 network in the UK.
I used a lot less than I expected due to the enormity of our task and the lack of time. In all,I only used 289 megabytes. This was mainly emails, a few small surveys and some general browsing,I did watch some short videos on nectar adpoints too. I used a Hi link Dongle that can work at 21mbps.
However,despite the comfortable feeling of being able to stay on line, I was disappointed to find that Samba adverts are almost non existent when connecting through their sim.
I had only one advert for most days and 2 on one or two days.
That meant that although the adverts watched while using the dongle did not deplete the amount I can use, they were pitifully inadequate if I had needed to have more than the small amount of web access I actually used.
If I had only been able to access via the dongle for say a month and we had not been so busy, I would have probably run out with my only option being to top up with money.
I suppose that one could go into burger restaurants or any of the other places where you can surf with their wifi while drinking a cup of tea and watch the adverts there, to be sure of getting enough to keep your account topped up when no wifi is available but it would need some dedication and determination.
Students would no doubt find this useful and for the very few times that we will need mobile broadband,so will I.
When we stayed at the youth hostel,broadband access was 50 pence for 30 minutes which seems expensive,I would use Samba in preference to that.
They could improve the idea enormously if they had a mobile phone page in which the adverts were accessible as they are on home Internet .
I did try to access their page via my phone browser. UCee browser could access the page but could not view the videos and nor could opera mini or the built in nokia browser(I think based on firefox).
For one thing it is easier to carry a mobile phone with you and you have much more chance of accessing free wifi simply because of the small format.
Secondly, a mobile phone is less alluring to thieves than a laptop would be so turning up in the same spot every day to top up your adverts would be less likely to gain notice .
I say page rather than App because an App is Operating system specific (unless java or python and still it would rely on a phone being able to handle those languages).
A mobile page can be seen by any mobile browser.
My other option for internet access was Joikuspot as my phones are all Nokia and that is a Nokia specific app as far as I know. This app worked perfectly although I hardly used it. It was very useful before I got the dongle to see the Samba sim and still go to the log in page (it needed to restart) . I used it a couple of times when I wanted something very quickly rather than find the dongle and let it start up.
My poor DD was about a week without Internet due to having to end her agreement when moving. DH had his phone for tethering (we discovered it is allowed on his tariff ,else he would have used my options).
Monday, 18 March 2013
megabytes , mobile phones and unlocking
We are soon off to scotty for the big push.
In other words...
DD is moving out of the flat and we can get in to clean it up and put it right prior to letting it.
DD has been there rent free for about 6 months so we have felt no qualms about her putting up with it as is.
I bought a steam cleaner from Ebay to take up with us to make sure the place is thoroughly clean .
I have tried it out at home and it is a good little machine.
The freezer was rather startled to discover it was going to get defrosted for the first time in about 18 months.
We have an old Aqua Vac that we bought years and years ago to cope with all the mess of pets and small kids.
It mostly lives in the shed as it is so noisy that the user has ringing in their ears after using it which can't be healthy.
Anyway,armed with the Aqua Vac and the Steamer, our freezer became the cleanest it has ever been except for when it was new.
The flat has had new radiators,a new cooker and a new shower.
We are probably going to paint the Bathroom .
I think we will be buying a new mattress for the bed too.
We have a new extractor fan to fit in the bathroom.
A sparky will actually fit it so that it is in compliance with safety regulations.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
While we are up there, we wont have TV or internet access.
We can take our laptops so we will take some films to watch .
I have joined Samba so that I can take one of our unlocked mobile broadband dongles for light surfing and emailing.
I have only just discovered Samba.
It is a company that sell a sim or a sim with a dongle and then you access their webpage to watch video adverts which credit your sim with megabytes.
So far I have been a member for 12 days and have about 900 megabytes for using when we go.
If you are interested in joining them, they are here http://www.sambamobile.com
I bought my sim using a code from moneysavingexpert which allowed me to get it for £1 delivered.
I dont know how long the Code is valid for but it is worth taking a look if you are interested in joining
OR
I can refer you and we each recieve £3 worth of credit....
My referral is here click here to be referred
The sims are quite cheap once you consider that the credit is free .
Sims and microsims are £5
A sim with a Dongle is £25
You can use the sims in any unlocked dongle or I believe in a 3 dongle as they work on the three network.
The microsims work in some tablets.
You can also add credit using your paypal account or debit/credit card .
Credit that you add with your money lasts 30 days.
Credit earned by watching ads lasts until you use it.
I think anyone who wants to surf away from home every now and then would find it useful.
If you were hoping to use it every day instead of broadband,it would only really be for very light use unless you were going to top it up .
3 ads a day would give only 10.5mb which is enough to view '30 web pages and 100 emails' (quoting their customer service). I have never had less than 3 to watch .
I also have Joikuspot on two of my phones.
It is a wifi access point program that turns your phone into the hotspot.
I wont use it much as mostly I will use the dongle but it might fill in when the dongle is running low.
I'll only use it with K-meleon which is a light weight browser.
These two things together are better than buying another mobile broadband sim with credit on.
I can get some data credit for 50p a day on my phones and will only use it if the samba sim runs out.
To see how much data I will use, I have Bitmeter on my laptop. You can monitor your connections with it so you dont go over what you have allowed yourself per day.
On my phones I have DataMonitor which does the same but just for the phone.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I unlocked all our broadband dongles.
We have huawei dongles .
One was a BT dongle and the other three were from 3.
The newest one is a HiLink dongle and I had to find a friendly forum with a person in the know who could give me the unlock code but it worked and all are now unlocked for free.
I have several Nokia phones as each time OH upgraded,he handed me his old phone.
The most recent two are on three because they are the kind that need a machine especially for unlocking. One I use as a camera and calculator and dont keep a sim in. It still works on our home wifi as a browser.
The other is my used phone for calls.
I also have an older version that is unlocked and on a different network.
In my drawer I have an N-gage which I unlocked with an unlock calculator and a 3310 also unlocked via calculator.
The N-gage is unlikely to get much use, its battery is too weedy but it does work.
The 3310 cant use 3g and most networks rely on 3g these days.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In other words...
DD is moving out of the flat and we can get in to clean it up and put it right prior to letting it.
DD has been there rent free for about 6 months so we have felt no qualms about her putting up with it as is.
I bought a steam cleaner from Ebay to take up with us to make sure the place is thoroughly clean .
I have tried it out at home and it is a good little machine.
The freezer was rather startled to discover it was going to get defrosted for the first time in about 18 months.
We have an old Aqua Vac that we bought years and years ago to cope with all the mess of pets and small kids.
It mostly lives in the shed as it is so noisy that the user has ringing in their ears after using it which can't be healthy.
Anyway,armed with the Aqua Vac and the Steamer, our freezer became the cleanest it has ever been except for when it was new.
The flat has had new radiators,a new cooker and a new shower.
We are probably going to paint the Bathroom .
I think we will be buying a new mattress for the bed too.
We have a new extractor fan to fit in the bathroom.
A sparky will actually fit it so that it is in compliance with safety regulations.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
While we are up there, we wont have TV or internet access.
We can take our laptops so we will take some films to watch .
I have joined Samba so that I can take one of our unlocked mobile broadband dongles for light surfing and emailing.
I have only just discovered Samba.
It is a company that sell a sim or a sim with a dongle and then you access their webpage to watch video adverts which credit your sim with megabytes.
So far I have been a member for 12 days and have about 900 megabytes for using when we go.
If you are interested in joining them, they are here http://www.sambamobile.com
I bought my sim using a code from moneysavingexpert which allowed me to get it for £1 delivered.
I dont know how long the Code is valid for but it is worth taking a look if you are interested in joining
OR
I can refer you and we each recieve £3 worth of credit....
My referral is here click here to be referred
The sims are quite cheap once you consider that the credit is free .
Sims and microsims are £5
A sim with a Dongle is £25
You can use the sims in any unlocked dongle or I believe in a 3 dongle as they work on the three network.
The microsims work in some tablets.
You can also add credit using your paypal account or debit/credit card .
Credit that you add with your money lasts 30 days.
Credit earned by watching ads lasts until you use it.
I think anyone who wants to surf away from home every now and then would find it useful.
If you were hoping to use it every day instead of broadband,it would only really be for very light use unless you were going to top it up .
3 ads a day would give only 10.5mb which is enough to view '30 web pages and 100 emails' (quoting their customer service). I have never had less than 3 to watch .
I also have Joikuspot on two of my phones.
It is a wifi access point program that turns your phone into the hotspot.
I wont use it much as mostly I will use the dongle but it might fill in when the dongle is running low.
I'll only use it with K-meleon which is a light weight browser.
These two things together are better than buying another mobile broadband sim with credit on.
I can get some data credit for 50p a day on my phones and will only use it if the samba sim runs out.
To see how much data I will use, I have Bitmeter on my laptop. You can monitor your connections with it so you dont go over what you have allowed yourself per day.
On my phones I have DataMonitor which does the same but just for the phone.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I unlocked all our broadband dongles.
We have huawei dongles .
One was a BT dongle and the other three were from 3.
The newest one is a HiLink dongle and I had to find a friendly forum with a person in the know who could give me the unlock code but it worked and all are now unlocked for free.
I have several Nokia phones as each time OH upgraded,he handed me his old phone.
The most recent two are on three because they are the kind that need a machine especially for unlocking. One I use as a camera and calculator and dont keep a sim in. It still works on our home wifi as a browser.
The other is my used phone for calls.
I also have an older version that is unlocked and on a different network.
In my drawer I have an N-gage which I unlocked with an unlock calculator and a 3310 also unlocked via calculator.
The N-gage is unlikely to get much use, its battery is too weedy but it does work.
The 3310 cant use 3g and most networks rely on 3g these days.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
present perfect
I bought an ereader for the daughter, on ebay.
It is for xmas of course,cant warrant that kind of spending every day.
It came today and is spiffing. LOL
I thought it was a greyscale screen but it is actually colour and can even play film files.
She is getting through a lot of books in her course at uni so it should help her keep down the costs.
I spent £39 on it and about £4 on next day delivery.
Here is the case I made for OH's phone.
Its similar to his bought one but I made it narrower so that the phone doesnt slew about .
That is my phone in it at the moment which doesn't have a camera.
The flap at the back folds either half way down or rolls and folds depending on if you want to see the back of the phone.
Folding halfway down means the rain shouldn't get in while it is in video camera mode.
It is for xmas of course,cant warrant that kind of spending every day.
It came today and is spiffing. LOL
I thought it was a greyscale screen but it is actually colour and can even play film files.
She is getting through a lot of books in her course at uni so it should help her keep down the costs.
I spent £39 on it and about £4 on next day delivery.
Its similar to his bought one but I made it narrower so that the phone doesnt slew about .
That is my phone in it at the moment which doesn't have a camera.
The flap at the back folds either half way down or rolls and folds depending on if you want to see the back of the phone.
Folding halfway down means the rain shouldn't get in while it is in video camera mode.
Monday, 31 October 2011
Bookishness and phones
I am still reading the hunger games.
I am now on book 3 called the Mockingjay.
So called because the heroin of the trilogy is becoming an icon for the rebellion in her own right and the Mockingjay was her symbol during the first two books as she struggled through the hunger games.
This third book has interesting parallels with Logans Run and Nineteen Eighty Four.
Phone talk
I was reading about James the ecopunk today.
He has a blog named http://www.ecopunk.org.uk/
In which he outlines his slavery free life and strategies for living as freely as he can.
He doesn't let anything get in his way,if he needs to relocate abroad,well he just ups and goes!
I have followed his blog for years and his previous blog before that.
An interesting read.
A recent post of his describes his use of his mobile phone.
I thought I would describe my own use of mobiles too in case anyone finds it interesting and if they don't 'meh' !
I have 4 phones. Each one having been passed along to me by my husband when he receives his latest upgrade.
Nokia 3310
The oldest is a Nokia 3310 which is a basic little phone for making calls and texts.
It has a few simple games and runs in Symbian.
The 3310 was a commonly owned phone amongst school children in the UK some years ago and so has a large supply of 'new fascia covers' which are often available for dirt cheap prices in charity shops.
My phone has a customized outer because the plain grey was too dull. I painted mine dark green and it has owls painted on it. I also have a dragons scale desktop screen and Harry Potter theme for the ring tone.
NGage
The next newest is an NGage which looks a bit like a games console.
It can play some very nice games providing you have a large enough memory card installed.
I have played Lara Crofts tomb raider on it and it was impressive.
The NGage can play games against others if you use its blue-tooth connection.
I also have used it to run Route66 gps program along with a GPS receiver which worked very well and started me on the road (literally) to not worrying about getting lost when driving to unknown places.
NGage can also be used as a word processor and there are quite a lot of applications that can be found online running under Java or Symbian to make it work as a
Nokia E61
Next is my very favourite phone, the Nokia E61
This is a smart phone. It can do all that the NGage does but with more style.
The screen is larger and GPS is much easier to find for this as it can run Tom Tom or Nokia Maps(free from nokia) which get updated more . No inbuilt GPS,you need a receiver.
I love the keyboard.
X6
The newest phone I have acquired is the X6 also Nokia.
This is an awful phone because it is touch screen.
My fingers are small,almost child-sized and I have trouble in typing on it so that my finger ends hit the right letter.
My son who owned this phone before me(not OH in this case) , has much bigger hands and couldn't type anything with it.
It has a saving grace however, it can take photographs.
For me,this is its main feature, it has an excellent camera.
It has become my phone number of quote in case I have to stick a contact number in on a form anywhere and my camera when I am submitting my receipts to shop and scan.
I keep the phone alive by dialing the 'whats my balance' number once a month so I don't bother ever topping it up as the money doesn't roll over month to month on 3 pay as you go tariff which is daylight robbery.
This has inbuilt GPS but it is a piece of sh**e ,it has only once connected to the satellites and when I most needed it to do so,when we were in a hurry , it completed copped out .
The maps are still viewable without connecting however which is handy for general use.
It can connect to wifi and that is handy for Internet and email if we are not at home but in range of a wifi spot.
I did get skype on it too but my daughter couldn't get it to work on her phone so that part is untested.
This also runs on Symbian OS.
I really like the OS as it is easy to install things to it but the newer versions have certificate signing which is a complete pain in the proverbial because it means that certificates can expire and the software you once installed no longer does..
I am now on book 3 called the Mockingjay.
So called because the heroin of the trilogy is becoming an icon for the rebellion in her own right and the Mockingjay was her symbol during the first two books as she struggled through the hunger games.
This third book has interesting parallels with Logans Run and Nineteen Eighty Four.
Phone talk
I was reading about James the ecopunk today.
He has a blog named http://www.ecopunk.org.uk/
In which he outlines his slavery free life and strategies for living as freely as he can.
He doesn't let anything get in his way,if he needs to relocate abroad,well he just ups and goes!
I have followed his blog for years and his previous blog before that.
An interesting read.
A recent post of his describes his use of his mobile phone.
I thought I would describe my own use of mobiles too in case anyone finds it interesting and if they don't 'meh' !
I have 4 phones. Each one having been passed along to me by my husband when he receives his latest upgrade.
Nokia 3310
The oldest is a Nokia 3310 which is a basic little phone for making calls and texts.
It has a few simple games and runs in Symbian.
The 3310 was a commonly owned phone amongst school children in the UK some years ago and so has a large supply of 'new fascia covers' which are often available for dirt cheap prices in charity shops.
My phone has a customized outer because the plain grey was too dull. I painted mine dark green and it has owls painted on it. I also have a dragons scale desktop screen and Harry Potter theme for the ring tone.
NGage
The next newest is an NGage which looks a bit like a games console.
It can play some very nice games providing you have a large enough memory card installed.
I have played Lara Crofts tomb raider on it and it was impressive.
The NGage can play games against others if you use its blue-tooth connection.
I also have used it to run Route66 gps program along with a GPS receiver which worked very well and started me on the road (literally) to not worrying about getting lost when driving to unknown places.
NGage can also be used as a word processor and there are quite a lot of applications that can be found online running under Java or Symbian to make it work as a
- mini film viewer
- mp3 player
- calculator
- calender
- Radio.
Nokia E61
Next is my very favourite phone, the Nokia E61
This is a smart phone. It can do all that the NGage does but with more style.
The screen is larger and GPS is much easier to find for this as it can run Tom Tom or Nokia Maps(free from nokia) which get updated more . No inbuilt GPS,you need a receiver.
I love the keyboard.
- It has powerpoint compatibility.
- Can watch films
- Play games for Symbian or Java
- Word process
- Spreadsheet
- Listen to the radio
- You can hook it up to a projector
- It can act as a modem
- It connects to wifi and bluetooth.
- Runs Symbian
X6
The newest phone I have acquired is the X6 also Nokia.
This is an awful phone because it is touch screen.
My fingers are small,almost child-sized and I have trouble in typing on it so that my finger ends hit the right letter.
My son who owned this phone before me(not OH in this case) , has much bigger hands and couldn't type anything with it.
It has a saving grace however, it can take photographs.
For me,this is its main feature, it has an excellent camera.
It has become my phone number of quote in case I have to stick a contact number in on a form anywhere and my camera when I am submitting my receipts to shop and scan.
I keep the phone alive by dialing the 'whats my balance' number once a month so I don't bother ever topping it up as the money doesn't roll over month to month on 3 pay as you go tariff which is daylight robbery.
This has inbuilt GPS but it is a piece of sh**e ,it has only once connected to the satellites and when I most needed it to do so,when we were in a hurry , it completed copped out .
The maps are still viewable without connecting however which is handy for general use.
It can connect to wifi and that is handy for Internet and email if we are not at home but in range of a wifi spot.
I did get skype on it too but my daughter couldn't get it to work on her phone so that part is untested.
This also runs on Symbian OS.
I really like the OS as it is easy to install things to it but the newer versions have certificate signing which is a complete pain in the proverbial because it means that certificates can expire and the software you once installed no longer does..
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