Internet Everywhere

After fussing with Telia to force them to sell me an Internet flat-rate despite not having an active personnr, I must say that I am quite impressed by the service.

You get a little white dongle (they come in black and pink, too) from Huawei called the E220 that you stick into your USB slot. Under Windows there is an autorun file that first thinks that this is a USB stick, and then installs all the software for you. You enter in your PIN, click on the server you want, and off you go!

For the Mac the software was broken and terminated immediately. But luckily I have the Windows emulation software Parallels, so I installed it there and downloaded the drivers and a little application from the Huawei site. Worked like magic, is very stable and fast enough that I could even have a sort-of video conference with the Princesses in the US over Skype. Awesome.

The family hijacked my laptop this evening in order to watch Sonnenallee, my laptop being the only thing that will play DVDs here. So I fussed with the EeePC - and guess what? It works! There is an idiot-proof description of how to get it running that I found. Works like a charm.

So now I can take a fully charged EeePC outside with me and use the Internet for a couple of hours! Only in Sweden, of course. England and France seem to have this kind of deal sorted out, too: flat-rate for mobile Internet. But Germany, as always, is dawdling. Wonder how long it will take before Vodafone brings this delight to the Teutons? I wish there was some way that we could *make* them give us what we want and need!