Guest FloatingFatMan Posted March 1, 2005 Report Posted March 1, 2005 Hi All, I have a question or 3 about wireless connectivity with the MDA III... At home I use a wired gigabit network, there is no wireless connectivity with it at the moment. I have ordered an MDA III which should hopefully arrive this week and was wondering about the best and most cost effective way to connect it to my wired LAN... There are Bluetooth dongles, and there are WiFi dongles, but which is best to use? I'm not replacing my router as the gigabit one was NOT cheap :D I assume with either dongle, I'll have to set up ICS on the machine they're plugged in to if I want to access the internet? Which will use the most power on the MDA? Which is better security wise? Do both operate the same way when it comes to accessing files on the LAN? What's the operating range on the MDA for WiFi and Bluetooth? I can get a 100M bluetooth dongle for the PC, but somehow I don't think the MDA has that kind of range... Thanks FFM
Guest fraser Posted March 1, 2005 Report Posted March 1, 2005 Forget a dongle, get WiFi as it doesn't need a PC to hook up to. So you don't need your PC turned on to check your mail, which would defeat the point of the phone!! You need a wireless access point/router to do it properly, it will do the job of ICS. You'll also be set for the future with laptops and tablet PCs, they all come with WIFi as an option (or commonly as standard). Get a 802.11g device, the phone isn't that fast, but most other WiFi devices are. Cisco kit is by far the best, but it's more expensive. I've not used Bluetooth yet as you describe, but I don't think it works like WiFi. With WiFi, you get a proper IP and you can use the device like any other on the network, pinging, VNC, SSH etc. I'm not sure if that is possible through a BT activesync pass thru, which is the alternative. Maybe. But it's still a hack rather than real internet access. Battery, Bluetooth wins. HOWEVER, you'll need ActiveSync to be running and connected for it to work. That continual connection will be a drain on the battery, probably outweighing the benefit. Plus, I'm not even sure if you can use Bluetooth without ActiveSync, probably not. WiFi is turned off when the phone is in standby, I can confirm that. Hopefully someone will correct me on the Bluetooth stuff if I'm wrong.
Guest theolsen Posted March 2, 2005 Report Posted March 2, 2005 You could try a BT access point - makes for a nice bridge between your BT devices and your gigabit lan. Belkin website have them.
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