Dongle

[Dee Sa]

I will probably have to go into hospital quite soon and want to take my laptop HP pavilion g series with me to keep me amused, I am a silver surfer & mrs techno I am not. I understand I will need a dongle to use my laptop, I should be home within 10 days so I dont want it for long. My phone is with Orange pay as you go, can anyone advice me as to which dongle would suit pls. Also is it just a matter of inserting the dongle and it will work, internet etc or is it a bit more complicated.

[beso]

In Australia hospital and other medical centres insist that mobile phones are switched off because of the potential to interfere with medical electronics.

Wireless Internet connections use the same transmission band so there is no way they would let you use it in the hospital unless things are very different in your locality.

[Skyline D]

The mobile phone ban is rarely enforced here. Doctors and nurses use them and use of them is positively encouraged in the maternity ward.

In our hospital there's a publicly available wifi connection anyway so you wouldn't need a dongle.

[rojash]

My FIL's just come out of hospital in the UK. Mobile phones were permitted everywhere, and there was a public WiFi available. The ward was fuil of peeps banging on on mobiles, banging away at netbooks and latops, and smearing away at iPads.

[Dee Sa]

thank you all for the info.

[hc4361]

I have this one:
http://store.three.co.uk/view/plan/MBBD01082012T180811?manufacturer=Huawei&deviceType=MBB_DONGLE&id=1205

I find it easy to use and fast. The initial £30 cost includes 1GB of data which should be plenty for ten days unless you use it to watch tv which gobbles up data.

[Scylax]

You can buy a suitable dongle at Carphone Warehouse for about £20.
Unless the hospital is many miles away, an Orange dongle will be fine, but CW can advise a different one if the hosp. is in a distant region.
Just plug it in and go. Interference with medical technology is long gone.

[boxtops]

check with the hospital dee sa - when OH was in, the signal was really poor from the wifi and it was only in certain areas (eg the cafe) that it was better than the wards