libby Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 So, today I set out to do some tests with Vodafone. At this moment I'm not convinced its what it claims. Unless of course I've got it all wrong!! One dongle at £40.00 including £15.00 air time, OK. After struggling to set it up I read there is a requirement to enter my Email address, WHY? It would appear that I cannot progress further without doing this. If I do not have an Email add; it would seem (to me) that I cannot use the system! I thought they were designed to be able to use the internet WITHOUT having to still pay line rental to an ISP. At the moment this does not seem so. I do not want to use Email, only surf the net. The salesman was quick to agree that the service avoided line rental at home. I can of course still add my present Email add; but the object was to eliminate all land line connections and go totally mobile. Any comments Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potjoe Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 HI,i have a 3 dongle cost £7.50 per mth and with 3GB`s per mth can not use it up,have to say Best £7.50 i have spent oh by the way NO cost for the dongle.Now we have no land line and i also have skype as well. By the way looking at going over to 3 for mob phone as well and stopping 02 it`s down to cost. The 3 dongle i think is all most as good as the land line B/Band. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sooty10 Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 Be aware that the 3 dongle does not have cover all over the uk. It does not work here in Gisburn. A friend had one when we went to Cartmel at Easter and he had no cover. I have a T Mobile and never been without cover. Not always 3G but it always gets on the net. Also it costs more, I think £15 a month. Pay your money and take your chance. Sooty 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
libby Posted April 30, 2009 Author Share Posted April 30, 2009 The comments posted have not answered my questions which were..... How can I progress through the start up procedure without having a land line Email address? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuwsmith Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 LibbyI have also bought a Vodaphone dongle. Used it for the first time in "anger" whilst away for the last 2 weeks in Pembrokeshire. It worked fine and was very economical, just a few pence for each connection to retrieve my email. I can't remember what details I put in when I first fired the thing up but probably did put my email address in although this info is probably so that they can send detail of other services/ offers etc. When you use the "dongle" it just gives you access to the internet independent of any ISP you may or may not have subscribed to. In other words it works! Just put your email address in if required and use the dongle when you wish. Just remember that you have to use it at least once every 6 months to keep any remaining credit valid Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuwsmith Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 LibbyI have also bought a Vodaphone dongle. Used it for the first time in "anger" whilst away for the last 2 weeks in Pembrokeshire. It worked fine and was very economical, just a few pence for each connection to retrieve my email. I can't remember what details I put in when I first fired the thing up but probably did put my email address in although this info is probably so that they can send detail of other services/ offers etc. When you use the "dongle" it just gives you access to the internet independent of any ISP you may or may not have subscribed to. In other words it works! Just put your email address in if required and use the dongle when you wish. Just remember that you have to use it at least once every 6 months to keep any remaining credit valid Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jenkothewanderer Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 Libby what is the problem using your current E mail address from your current ISP provider. I have just ordered a dongle from Vodafone but has not yet arrived so my ability to help is limited but I cannot see why you have a problem. You willl be able to surf the net and by connecting and logging on direct to your current ISP website you will be able to read and send E mails if you wish. Please explain your concern ? Regards JENKO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianR Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 libby - 2009-04-30 6:54 PM I thought they were designed to be able to use the internet WITHOUT having to still pay line rental to an ISP. At the moment this does not seem so. Any comments An e-mail address is quite independent of your ISP. My e-mail address is with Virgin.net, but I use a completely different ISP - in fact, I use one ISP when in the UK and a different one when in France. Entering your current e-mail address doesn't, therefore, mean that you will be using your current ISP when you use the Vodaphone dongle, even if you do use the dongle when picking up your e-mails. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwaviation Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 Make one up.... Failing that get a freebie one from Freeuk, I have used mine for years irrespective of numerous ISP changes :-D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mel B Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 I've had a 3 mobile internet dongle now for over a year - it can be an absolute pain in the b*m at times but most of the time is quite acceptable. it can really never ever match a good dedicated land-line broadband service but it does come close if you don't want to have to have both. But I'm confused! If you don't want to give out your current email address, or if it is linked to a land line provider, why not register with Yahoo or Google (Gmail) and give them that email address instead? I have several email accounts, yahoo, google, work, etc, etc, and use whichever one is most appropriate at the time. As an aside - I heard on Working Lunch today that "3" are going down the route of 'free Skype' on their network, both in the UK and abroad. It is probably going to be coming in in May/June and from what was being said you may only have to have a "3" enabled phone (their sims won't always work in phones which were not originally "3" phones ... something to do with them needing higher powered phone or something like that?), you then buy a "3" PAYG sim (£1.99) and use that. Only caught the tail end of it but it sounded extremely interesting!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lennyhb Posted April 30, 2009 Share Posted April 30, 2009 I brought the Vodafone one last week plugged it in & had it up and running in less than 2 minutes. We went away last weekend & used it in anger, found the download speed a bit on the slow side even though we were registering a full strength signal. Speed improved a fair bit by fitting a USB extension lead & putting the dongle buy a window, worked better than on the roof. The cost of using it is amazingly low, first session browsing for 20/25 min & downloaded over 60 emails cost 5p. Used it over the weekend for about 4 hours cost 50p. I noticed a couple of sessions one of 20min & another of 25min no deduction was made from my top-up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
libby Posted April 30, 2009 Author Share Posted April 30, 2009 Thanks to all for the comments, I'm a little clearer now I think. Let me have a play until tomorrow then I'll come back and say what I've achieved. From what is said there's no difficulty. I had rather assumed the Email system could ONLY travel via the ISP. And that is BT. I'm trying to avoid any incoming land line and go completely mobile on all things, the phone has been mobile for years and now I'm aiming to use the Broadband similarly. Be back tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
libby Posted May 1, 2009 Author Share Posted May 1, 2009 Eureka !! Its so easy once you've put the brain in gear !! Thanks to those who are much smarter than me. I was determined to make it work. I was assuming that Vodafone would provide a separate Email page display that I would work with, and I couldn't find one. Once I realised I had to use the same original Email and Google Icon's it all fell into place. There was never any info to explain this. The Email address 'requirement' was also a puzzle. I assumed Vodafone would would require a Vodafone 'E' address. I now assume that any name will do provided it has the '@' symbol and ends in .co.uk or .com but there is no explanation to advise this. The next move is a variety of field tests when I travel. The cost so far was app 20p for about 4 hrs. Very pleased at the moment Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mel B Posted May 1, 2009 Share Posted May 1, 2009 libby - 2009-04-30 11:16 PM And that is BT. I'm trying to avoid any incoming land line and go completely mobile on all things, the phone has been mobile for years and now I'm aiming to use the Broadband similarly. This is what we did in March last year. At that point we had hardly used a mobile phone so were pretty useless with them, but we were sick to death of our land line provider for broadband (Kingston Communications) and the only option open to use was to go mobile as you can't have any other land line broadband in our area, plus if we had sold the bungalow and moved to our other one in Scun-thorpe (spell checker doesn't like it without the hyphen!), KC couldn't guarantee that we could use their service there so we didn't fancy tying ourselves in for another year's contract and then not being able to use it! We decided to go mobile on the pones as well as the broadband simply because the deal at the time gave us extra minutes on the phones and half price broadband to boot, so it didn't cost us much more and would give us 2 phones and the benefit of being able to use them wherever we wanted, as with the mobile broadband ... great for taking away in the camper! :-D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwaviation Posted May 1, 2009 Share Posted May 1, 2009 That hyphen reminds me of the old "Who put the 'T' in Typhoo" joke :D :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
libby Posted May 2, 2009 Author Share Posted May 2, 2009 So after a day of mobile BB testing I find it all so easy. To cut air time costs, simply copy and store any incoming messages, then take your time replying and copy and paste those into their Email addresses and the job's done. Saves hours of air time. AND NO LINE RENTAL...MAGIC STUFF....THANKS TO ALL Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lennyhb Posted May 2, 2009 Share Posted May 2, 2009 Libby, You are making it difficult, just download your emails then disconnect you can do all your replies & new email while off line then just re-connect to send them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clive Posted May 2, 2009 Share Posted May 2, 2009 I don,t understand the problem. I haggled and got an 18 month contract with Vodafone for a 3G dongle at £10 a month for 15 months and then £15 a month for the last 3 months. The initial offered deal was £15 for each month. It came with a FREE dongle. 3 gig a month allowance. I plugged the dongle into a USB port on my notebook and it installed itself. My notebook already has outlook set up for my "normal" mail and it will retrieve anything sent to my normal email address via outlook in the normal way. At the moment I use google mail to send emails when using the dongle. I am told that I can set up Outlook to do this but so far have totally failed with this aspect of mobile internet. So I write the reply as if I am going to use outlook, include the outgoing email address in the text then copy and past it all into gmail. then copy and paste the email address into the gmain address panel. It works but if anyone has actually GOT outlook working with gmail then I would love to know how. I have done all the things that the various forums say you need to do but it just dont work for me. But apart from this frustration it works fine, well above normal dial up speed but well short of home broadband. No time constraints, just a penalty if you download more than 3 gig a month - and this for me is very unlikely. One word of warning, the dongle also installed a TEXT program and its easy to send texts from a puter keyboard - but use it at your cost. Its not included with the contract. I spent a massive 71p in a month!!! C. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randonneur Posted May 2, 2009 Share Posted May 2, 2009 Clive, I don't know whether you have been into the settings on your Gmail to configure Outlook. If you have not, then sign into your gmail account and click on settings and then on Fowarding/POP/Imap and at the bottom you will see the configuration for Outlook and others. We use Incredimail and this is what we had to do and it works fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
libby Posted May 2, 2009 Author Share Posted May 2, 2009 Thanks Lenny that even better Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gordonaldson Posted May 2, 2009 Share Posted May 2, 2009 I just had to add my bit to this thread. I got the Dongle that was mentioned on this site (was it last year,time flies)last year. 5GB for £7.50 and I'm extremely happy with it. All I can say is,"thanks to this site". and "Isn't/wasn't it cheep". Who's that guy that says, "cheep as chips". Hey, come to think of it, potatoes are getting quite dear now. Thanks again, Gordon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
naittaw Posted May 2, 2009 Share Posted May 2, 2009 Please be aware that when you are talking "cheap" your are talking cheap in the UK. Quite a different story if you are in mainland Europe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lennyhb Posted May 2, 2009 Share Posted May 2, 2009 To set up Outlook or any other email client to send your email direct you just need to change your smtp server to the vodafone one, the difficult bit is finding the server name as vodfone don’t to want anyone to known I found it on a forum after a google search. In Outlook or Outlook Express go Tools/accounts/mail/properties/servers and change Outgoing mail (SMTP) to ‘send.vodafone.net’ remember to change it back when you get home. It may be easier to use Outlook at home & set Outlook Express for use when away using the dongle. I use Thunderbird for my email client (from Monzilla the Firefox people) this has the advantage of being able to set up multiple SMPT servers so I don’t need to change settings for home or dongle use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
libby Posted May 2, 2009 Author Share Posted May 2, 2009 -1- Why do you need to send an Email 'direct'. Do they not all go 'direct' ? -2- What is the advantage of having several SMTP's ? -3- Is this all related to your occupation ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lennyhb Posted May 3, 2009 Share Posted May 3, 2009 You can pick up emails from any POP Box but you can only send via the ISP you are connected through. When at home my ISP is Plusnet so I have to send mail via their server, when using the dongle my ISP is Vodafone so I must send via their server. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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