Best 3g/mobile broadband dongle for light use

[Millennium]

Hi All

My aunt is getting a laptop soon and needs broadband internet access. We don't want to pay for ADSL + Phoneline for this as she wouldn't use the land line for anything else.

She's unlikely to use more then 3GB a month and more then likely won't even use that so the best deal is what I'm looking for. I have a vodaphone dongle (K3805-Z) but am unsure if its locked or how to unlock it. Any help on that appreciated.

The signal should be good as she is in a built up area (of course contention may be a problem). What would you knowledgeable folk suggest? Some form of non-expiring prepay or a mobile sim with a contract in a dongle? Are these still available?

How much would the contract cost and how much would a dongle be (2nd hand is fine)? Any good sites to check for the best contract and would those sims be allowed to use their data allowance in a dongle (some plans don't allow tethering so I assume they wouldn't be allowed in a dongle either...).

And finally, I did a forum search and came up with this thread on good performance with a three dongle so that's probably what I'd go for if I had to choose, though 15GB/month is way overkill it doesn't seem too expensive.

Thanks for the help, hopefully this thread will help others too in a similar situation.

[mikerr]

Some form of non-expiring prepay - Are these still available?

You can still buy the non-expiring vodaphone sims from ebay, but not direct from vodafone anymore

[blueball]

I stopped my 3 contract when I noticed they charge you an arm and a leg above your monthly fee if you cannot get a 3G signal and start using GPRS. With vodafone you do not get charge extra for GPRS traffic. I got a 1Gb - £10 month Vodafone dongle and pleased with service and coverage.

[Millennium]

I had a hunt around westfield for some deals and came across a couple of things;
1) They still seem to be doing free laptop deals - anyone have experience with this or can suggest the best one? We do have a laptop but it's pretty old!
2) There was a sim only £10 per month for 3gb deal (18 month min) which we were told would work fine in a dongle. This seemed like the best deal. Will there be trouble using a phone sim in a dongle?

[Consfearacy]

I use the T Mobile 120 PAYG usb stick, I top up £15 per month and i get 2gb usage.
When I use my allowance the only restrictions are no heavy usage between 16.00hrs and 00.00hrs,
i.e no youtube or massive downloads, but you can still surf and do all the other things ppl do on the net,
The dongle only cost me £9.99 to buy and came with 30 days free air time,
Not sure if they still running the deal but you can always try???

[Spud1]

If you can find one, then the non-expiring ones are the best deal imo..assuming light/infrequent usage.

I bought my voda one over a year ago for £30 and I am still using that initial 1gb of credit. I used it exclusively for almost a month when I moved into this house (only got "real" internet yesterday!) and it still has about 200mb left on it. The beauty is that it just doesn't expire, whereas everyone else will wipe out your remaining credit after 30 days etc.

I think they are still going for about £30 on ebay at the moment, inc sim/dongle.