Decision time for newbies on laptops/mifi/phones

[AlmostBoatless]

Would appreciate any advice and suggestions. The sticky on 'Cell phones and internet access' has been educational but we have a couple of questions and would love your input.

We are spending the winter in warmer climates in our 32' fiver. Three questions we would appreciate your advice on.

We will be purchasing 2 laptops, one slightly more powerful and one for surfing the net and the weather. I will be working some on the internet. We have a WD passport for backup. I have CDs for Quicken and MS Office 10. I will be transferring all pics, shortcuts, Quicken, Excel and Word info from an HP tower (I know, old school). The other laptop will be used for surfing the net and the weather, no gaming or need for alot of memory. He will replace an old Toshiba notebook. Any advice on brand or what to watch out for?

Second question is about internet access. It sounds like Verizon and a mifi - or jetpack, is the way we should go. We will be banking, email, storing and sharing pics and some work related internet if I get lucky. Which jetpack or mifi for internet access and when I go to the Verizon store, which questions should I ask and what to be wary of?

Last question is about our phones. I have a Droid mini on PagePlus (a reseller of Verizon) and it works great. DH has a tracphone and it needs replacing. He is better with a flipphone. We will probably need to go with unlimited access for me but hubby is very rarely on the phone and does not need much.

Would love any advice and suggestions from the experienced people on this wonderful forum! Thank you!

[MrWizard]

microsoft updates come out regularly, one tuesday a month, critcal emg updates sometimes occur inbetween regular updates
but if updates is ON.. it will update when turned connected to internet..even if it was turned off when the update roll out occurred
it has to be turned off to control it
then you do it manually by clicking the update now,, at your time and place of choice

[tomkaren13]

I have a Tracfone that is on a Value plan. Think they still offer that. How it works is each month I pay about$7, auto-pay by Credit card. Do not use it much and if I need more time I add 50 Minutes for $10 but my phone gets double minutes so that is 00. Some new phones get triple minutes for life. Might be a suggestion for DH.

[keithhelms]

GMandJM wrote:
The tablet-as-a-hotspot idea is growing on me. Does yours require a long-term contract or can you do pay-as-you-go?

I got mine on sale for $99 with a 2 year contract. Fortunately the monthly fees for tablets are smaller than for cell phones. I'm paying $10 a month for their line access fee or whatever they call it plus $30 a month for 4GB of data allowance. $40 a month is not bad. I think cell phone plans start at $70 a month.

You can get tablets on a pay as you go plan. They have a much smaller list of tablets you can purchase for that plan. You could probably also pick up a used tablet with Verizon access that is no longer under contact from somebody and then set up pay as you go access for it.

Pay as you go is convenient if you only use a device for a small number of months during the year. It can also be a bit of a pain. They set up an account for you and a "phone" number, you pay for whatever amount of data you want to put on the device for the next month, then you can use it. If you don't use the device again for (I think) 90 days after that setup, the account and number get deleted and you have to go through that whole process again the next time. You need internet access to register the device, so you have to have another way of accessing the internet to complete that setup (wifi or something).

Correction: The account gets deleted 90 days after the data expires, not after registration.

[MrWizard]

Mellliencom is gone
No longer in exsistance
you need to check each carrier/vendor that interests you

[GMandJM]

The tablet-as-a-hotspot idea is growing on me. Does yours require a long-term contract or can you do pay-as-you-go?

[keithhelms]

You can probably double up on a couple of your purchases. These days, all you need for surfing the web and checking the weather is a phone or a tablet. A phone is kind of small for browsing web pages, so a nice 7-10" tablet would be better. Many tablets these days also come with cell network access and hotspot capability. That means you could also use the tablet in place of a jetpack.

I have a Verizon Jetpack that is on their prepay plan. I pay $60 to get 3GB of data allowance good for a month. I got a Google Nexus 7 tablet from Verizon a year and a half ago, and since then I have only used the Jetpack once. The tablet looks like a router to my laptop and allows me to connect to the internet through the Verizon network. The speed is always faster than any campground wifi I've ever seen.

The only time I've used the Jetpack since getting the tablet was last fall when I was in Fishing Bridge campground in Yellowstone. Yellowstone now has limited cell service, but my tablet could not see a signal. The Jetpack has better range and I was able to get 1 or 2 signal bars using it.

[GMandJM]

Boingo is generally in airports and restaurants.

[DallasSteve]

Boingo.ocm

On the page I just posted was an ad for Boingo unlimited Wi-Fi for $10 per month. It sounds too good to be true. What is the catch? Very slow speeds, I guess.

[DallasSteve]

Prepaid Wireless Guide

I found this website which claims to have current info on wireless Internet plans. About the best plan I see for massive data is Millenicom's offer of 20 GB for $70. I've never heard of them. T-Mobile looks to have the best offer of the majors: 10.5 GB for $70. Walmart is also on the list but their offers are disappointing to say the least.

[GMandJM]

MrWizard wrote:
When setting up your Windows pc
One of things in the initial setup is Windows wanting to do an update
Click no..later..etc..Not yes...well if your on cable data and want to wait the extra time during setup you can do the update

After everything is up and running,
You goto the control panel to turn OFF automatic Windows updates
This does not affect Norton anti virus getting it's updates
Windows has large monthly updates every month, something that can eat a lot of mobile data...something you want to avoid when using a MiFi hotspot or phone hotspot

Thanks for the info. Updates (and not shutting them off) turned into quite a "discussion" in our camper when we were using the JetPack.

Isn't there some schedule for big MS updates? I think I read that somewhere - that they generally come out on, like, the first what-ever-day of the month?

Sorry if this off tracks the original thread. It's good info for anyone/everyone with limited data to know this stuff.

[MrWizard]

When setting up your Windows pc
One of things in the initial setup is Windows wanting to do an update
Click no..later..etc..Not yes...well if your on cable data and want to wait the extra time during setup you can do the update

After everything is up and running,
You goto the control panel to turn OFF automatic Windows updates
This does not affect Norton anti virus getting it's updates
Windows has large monthly updates every month, something that can eat a lot of mobile data...something you want to avoid when using a MiFi hotspot or phone hotspot

[rr2254545]

I have had a 15 inch HP laptop since January it is 6 GB memory and 750 GM hard drive and a Intel 13 processor - no problems with it - currently 429.99 at Best buy

I use a I pad for my e-mail and other things

I have had a Verizon Mifi for over 6 years now and love it - have had service in 98% of the places we have camped - the Mifi (trademark) is the only one I will ever have I think the current one they are selling in model 6620

[donn0128]

Have a laptop and two tablets. Next trip the laptop will stay home. For me the tablets do 99% of what we need. If you think you can survive with limited band width a mifi is OK. Personally when my contract expires I will probably cancel my mifi and use my phones wifi hotspot feature. Does the same thing with one less item to pay for. Remember, any cell technology is going to cost. 10GB on Verizon is 80 dollars a month. And 10GB can go pretty fast.

[GMandJM]

MrWizard wrote:

BTW turn off automatic windows updates .. when your setting up the new PCs
turn it totally off,, you can set it to NOtify if you want,,but absolutely NO downloads, not even DL now install later

How, exactly does one do this on a PC? As stated before, I rarely use Windows and when I requested that a certain someone turn off all updates he said he couldn't/didn't know how (meaning he didn't want to).

Does turning it off effect Norton's and its updates, do you know?

[Bill_Satellite]

I recently bought a new ASUS tablet/laptop (removable keyboard, love it!) and the updates right out of the box was over 1.5 GB. Luckily I was at the end of my monthly data and still had 5GB left to use. As Mr. Wizard mentions, watch out when hooking up anything new!