From reading some recent threads i see quite a few people use mobile broadband for onsite downloads and am wondering what you use and what you pay. I apreciate you get a limited allowance for montly fees but realistically how much do you need/use

cheers
Dave

Or should i just get an iphone

£15 top up gets you 3gb usage with Vodafone one i have although i don't use it for this purpose. A CD holds around 700mb so as long as your not downloading box sets or the like you should be fine. A friend of mine does just use his phone and gets tracks off amazon then bluetooths them across to his Laptop.

my friend has got a mobile dongle and he has nothing but trouble bad signal etc.......... and it can be expensive. they offered me a dongle from t-mobile. As i have a contract phone with them with free unlimited tinternet i downloaded an app for the g1(free app) that lets you plug your phone into a pc/laptop and can be used as a dongle if not better! saves a fortune and only having to pay for my phone contract that i was already paying for save the £££££££££££

Not needed to do it at a gig, but my Android Hero works as an access point. Using my netbook, I can surf/download at sometimes very good rates.
I'm paying <£35/month for HTC Hero phone+700mins+100txts+unmetered broadband. I have approached nearly 2GB the other other month.
A quick check on the Orange site tells me you could get an iPhone for about the same cost (600mins/month).
Apparently "unmetered" means 750MB/Month.

If you're in the market for a phone, then this may be a better route than a dongle. Get advice, but I class my mobile as a business tool, with limited personal use, and so the majority of the cost is tax deductible.



Personally, unless I had lots of time (ie Carmen Djing), I'd not have time to find the track, purchase, download then copy to USB.. Lots of stress and effort, and most punters would not appreciate the work.


Jas

Agree that dongles are a pain in the ..

More venues have wifi and on a couple of occasions I have been given access during setup and been able to use live downloads as well as browse sites like Wikipedia when an awkward question gets asked about tracks or I have a mini-quiz.

As posted last year I have also been known to tap off Spotify when I don't have a track although the song list is rarely up to date.

I need a new phone anyway and that route seems appealing, i just thought if there was a cheap reliable dongle then that would do

£15 on top of a £20-£30 per month phone contract would be daft really since i would only want to download a few tracks per month but if i take the karaoke down the digital route then that may throw a spanner in the iphone option

my intial thouhts re the iphone is just to have that connected direct to the mixer as opposed to syncing on site.

its a proper nightmare looking for a new phone unless you are really on the ball with whats what with technology, shops tend to sell you what they want to sell you when you are a bit ignorant

Thats why my 75 year old father-in-law has a very nice 42"plasma, sky hd and a bose soundsystem, they see him coming from way across the car park.

will keep looking - cheers

Dave

i have both vodafone (got deal on new laptop, 320 gig hdd and gig of ram) and orange dongles, greedy I know but the kids use one an I the other, both perform ok but voda better than orange but orange cheaper

Minty....

I currently use an o2 dongle... on pay as you go....

For any gig I think I might need downloads I buy 24 hours of access for £2

I only use the dongle perhaps 2 times a month so it works out cost effective.

Check out ebay for cheap dongles... or PCworld do regular deals! :)

I'm in Ireland so rates are different, however I can tell you mobile broadband has been very helpful to me on a few occasions, no matter how many opportunities you give B & G's to give you a list of "must plays" they often omit songs that have special meaning to them, only a few weeks ago I had a best man come up to me and ask for Mr. Big - To be with you, as it was the B & G's special song (It didn't even feature on their requested songs list ). I probably have it in my CD collection somewhere but wouldn't even know where to start looking, onto itunes and it's ready to play in under a minute, crowd loved it and all sang along, magic. It's a good resource to have when you are stuck for an important tune you can't find / don't have.

Hello all, not posted in a week or so..

I've got a Three 3g dongle, which I've had for over 18 months, Its not bad - it doesnt work on Virgin West Coast trains, but doubt anyone would be DJing on a train moving faster than it can lock on to a new base station...

It works fairly well though for what I use it for - I signed up for a 5Gb at half price contract (was a quidco deal), and th emost i've ever used was about 600Mbytes ! (Could have saved myself 2.50 a month if i'd gone for lower amount). I pay 7.50 a month for this. I do use it as emergency backup - like when we had really odd issues with the router crashing. For me, 7.50 is nothing for a backup - especially as I'm a remote worker :)

I've used it a few times to download tracks off amazon/etc when really special reqeuests have been made, or when the same track has been requested about 10 times by 10 different people in a short space of time..

I will be changing phones when the new iphone comes out, as i've sort of changed jobs which now requires iphone app development. So I'm thinking of doing some potential DJ related app.

Teez: You on the free spotify or a subscriber?


Cheers,

David

ps, if you've installed the latest Spotify (with the Social networking built in) you can find my rubbish playlists and other crap by typing:
spotify:user:djgraham in the spotify application's search box :)

What sort of bandwidth do you get for £2 and can you activate it easily, ie decide to need it at a gig and get online there and then

I have a 3 mobile dongle which i picked up when a certain telecommunications company decided to forget to give me broadband - that was a hard 2 months - about 2 years ago

if i remember rightly i got a pay as you go service and it cost £15 for 3gb which was valid for 30 days.I have never used it since so i would imagine the sim is now dead as they reclaim the numbers after a while.

the dongle cost £50 and reception was quite good and i may look at this again if i can find it

A new decent phone is winning so far, shame some tethering services cost so much.

Dave


edit - this looks interesting http://threestore.three.co.uk/dealsummary....code=18MB1GD033 MiFi - mobile broadband with wifi for the ipod etc. Different!

Minty... check out the tariffs on PAYG ... http://shop.o2.co.uk/promo/o2mobilebroadband/tab/Pay_and_Go

Generall I find the 500mb more then enough for the odd request or for karaoke downloads....
Speed wise, I tend to find its quicker then the home broadband at times LOL

With regards to ease.... once you've set up the dongle for the first time, getting online takes literally 2 minutes if that!

Hope that helps :)

(( Oh ... one problem I have found is that it takes over your wireless controller... so you might want to turn it off if using a standard wifi connection ))

the unlimited wifi is a bit confusing, sorry to sound dim but does it act as a wifi dongle for devices without wifi.

I think the 3 mobile is better value at £7.50 for 1 gig over 30 days but if i dont use its not cheap.

The 16gb 3Gs iphone on orange is £75 + £30 per month on a 24 month business plan.

Oh i dont know, life was easier without laptops and mobile phones - you had a box of vinyl and that was it.

David I think for us to share your playlists you have provide a link.

http://open.spotify.com/user/djgraham

:)

Cheers,

David </offtopic>

Hi David
My spotify has been updated(very impressed) and I can now see your lists.What are your Friday lists?
By the way my name is djtrev if you want to look.I would be interested to know what actually comes up onscreen.

Ahh the @fridaytunes lists? These were a twitter based theme where there would be a "theme" for tunes you could add to the collaborative playlist... Basically a friend of mine set this up so that anyone could subscribe to the playlist and add tunes to the list, and as long as it was within the theme... the idea was that everyone who was subscriebd would listen to the tracks on that friday..

Some of us would try and shoehorn particular tracks in (for example I'd always try to go for a Girls Aloud track, and another friend of mine would always attempt to put a Spice Girls track on there or something equally as bad :) )

Full list of playlists here (it didnt last that long really)...

http://fridaytunes.com/

And twitter feed of the @fridytunes account:-
http://twitter.com/fridaytunes

Cheers,

David

p.s Added you to my spotify now too :)