Quote Originally Posted by Jon Wehrenberg View Post
There you go with the foreign language again.

I freely admit a lack of technical understanding and I am just happy to be able to send an email or post on the forum. My cell phone can only do one thing and that is ring and allow me to talk. No text, camera, voice mail or anything else.

So when terms like droid and tethering and router are thrown around I don't have a clue. What may be an old system to you and others is so far beyond what I have I am lost.

I would like someone to start an explaination of what it takes by citing costs also. I have no laptop, but if connecting while on the road was both fast and cheap I might be tempted, but last time I did anything like that using a Verizon connected laptop at a Verizon store the speeds were so slow it was insane, especially when I considered what they charged for the access. They also wouldn't or couldn't tell me what their limits meant in terms of usage. I have no idea how many gigs or bytes I use here at home so I don't know if I exceed their limit. For us and the occasional trips we can easily ignore the computer for a week or more as we will do next week. I still use Windows XP.
Sorry Jon, you have a valid point that what is clear to one isn't always clear to another.

I'll try to answer you now.

Droid: this refers to any phone running the Google Android system.

There are three major players in the smart phone arena, Droid by Google, Iphone by Apple, and the starter of the trend Blackberry (aka Crackberry ) All have rabid supporters, all are good, choose the one you prefer. Iphone is currently only offered by ATT.

Tethering is connecting your phone to your computer by either a cable or bluetooth (wireless device system). This option saves you money. For example, I tether my Droid and use PDANet (app) to use my phone's unlimited data allowance. If I were to use an aircard, Verizon limits me to 5g and tells me to BOHICA if I go over. By tethering, I don't have to worry about exceeding my data plan, and also don't have to pay the extra $70 per month for the aircard service.

A router is a way to share you Internet connection. Fuzzy and I used to connect the aircard to a Cradlepoint router to have a private wifi network in our coach. When we bought the Droids, we dropped the aircard and now each do straight tethering to our computers.

An aircard can either plug into the designated slot on your computer, or if it plugs into your USB port it is also called a dongle.

As for service, when we are in a 3G area, we can watch streaming video with no problems. Hence how we were exceeding our data plan.

Ok, did this help?

Cheers, Sherry