I have raved many times about the Wiflyer. The cool, little tool, which turns a dial up internet connection into wireless using wifi. I’ve used it every day for about 3 years now, and it’s been great. Unfortunately, it’s been acting flaky the past few months, so I started looking for alternatives.
Always On Wireless, the company who makes the Wiflyer, appears to have disappeared. The Wiflyer is still available on ebay.
There’s a tool called Nebo Wireless, which uses 900Mhz FM cordless phone technology. It includes a base unit with a usb communicator. Looks kind of cool.
I could hook up a wireless router to my desktop and tap into the internet connection from my laptop. I decided this would be a last resort, since I don’t want to leave my desktop on all the time. Too big of a waste of electricity. My laptop costs much less to leave on than my desktop.
The last option I discovered is a bluetooth modem. There appears to be several different brands, but the only one I could find a link to, to buy was from a company called Zoom Telephonics. The modem plugs into an electrical outlet and a phone jack. That’s it. You then can connect to the modem using bluetooth. If your computer does not have the bluetooth capability built in, then you will need a separate bluetooth adapter, also called a bluetooth dongle. There are different classes of bluetooth: 1, 2 and 3. Class 2 seems to be the most common, but Class 1 provides the furthest range, 100m. The bluetooth modem from Zoom is a Class 1. Zoom also has several bluetooth adapters including a Class 1 adapter. A Class 2 bluetooth adapter will work, but your range will be limited to about 10m, so for a wireless dial up internet connection it makes more sense to go for the Class 1 bluetooth adapter to get the longer range.
Well, the bluetooth modem is the option I went with and it is AWESOME!! The Zoom bluetooth modem is very small, about half the size of the Wiflyer. The only thing missing is a volume control for the sound the modem makes when dialing up your connection. The Wiflyer had a volume control. The bluetooth modem comes with an installation cd that you put in your computer and install. Easy and went smoothly.
The bluetooth adapter I went with was the Class 1 Zoom bluetooth adapter. The bluetooth adapter is also great for connecting my cell phone to my laptop for transferring pictures. The bluetooth adapter also came with an installation cd. Installation of that also went smoothly, no problems. The software used is BlueSoleil. Not sure if that’s good software, but it’s been working well so far.
Once the software is installed, you search for bluetooth devices. Once the modem is found, you right click on the found modem icon and connect bluetooth dial up networking. A dial up networking box comes up where you enter your ISP username, password and dial up phone number. The only problem I’ve come across so far, is sometimes it takes a couple of tries for the connection to connect. Maybe it’s just the ISP and nothing to do with the modem. The Wiflyer sometimes had problems. It’s hard to tell.
Connection speed seems pretty good. I still need to find a good way to find out what my connection speed is. If anyone has any tips, please let me know. I also use Google Chrome, which definitely is the fastest browser I’ve tried. Browsers I’ve tried include Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox and the classic version of Maxthon. Maxthon comes in second, with Firefox third.
Both bluetooth items are available at Amazon.com: Zoom bluetooth modem
If anyone has any other suggestions for creating a wireless dial up internet connection, please let me know.
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