Just recently i have seen phone provider "3" advertising dongles for use on the internet from £10 a month for 1gb....40 hours usage....,i logged onto their site and used the data usage measure and for general surfing etc 40 hours is what i would get.As i only use the net for e-bay finance,knowledge,browsing etc,and don't download music,films,tv,this seems ideal,my wife and i both have mobiles on pay as you go and the only reason the landline is in is for mainly family calls and broadband.I could do away with the standing charges for line...nearly£40 a quarter....and my broadband package is about £13 a month so a good saving really.......but i would like to know if anyone has used one of these on their home pc?..and are they any good?....any problems?........as i am a computer crinkly any advice/help would be much appreciated.........:thumbsup:.....thanks in advance for any helpful replies...............:)

I wouldn't. They use the phone network for Internet (It's a sim card inside the dongle). My ex had one and although it said fast download etc it was very slow.

See if you can try before you buy.

Both my kids have dongles, one on G3 pay as you go, and the other on G3 contract. My daughter who is on pay as you go prefers this as you cant go over your time, it just cuts you off. If you are on contract and you go over your alloted Gbytes it is quite costly.
My son is on contract, and gets quite a lot for his monthy fee.
Neither has complained about not getting connected, sometimes like me on BT broadband it does disconnect, but no serious problems.

I'd recommend it, I have the 3gb package and I use my for a few hours every night for general surfing, streaming etc and I never go over the limit. If you're near your limit they send you a message letting you know anyway, so it's easy to avoid.

I don't have a landline so for me it made much more sense to get mobile broadband.

Hope that helps, I'm not really very hi-tech myself...

Dont forget to take into account the usage to update your anti-virus definitions and Windows Updates.
Earlier this month one of the windows updates was 250Meg.
Thats not typical but it does come along now and again.

iv had a 3 network dongle for 10 months now and every month there is a problem , i had it replaced 3 times stay well clear (also its not broardband speed)

I got mine on a £7.50 a month 18 month contract with a 5Gb download limit and whilst the main bugbear is how slow it is when surfing at home, it's better than nowt for a relatively small outlay. My download speed at home averages out at a pretty dismal 20kb per second so if I'm downloading video or music I just start the download and go off and do something else for 20 minutes.

It does of course depend on the 3 network coverage in your area. I've achieved much faster speeds when downloading with it away from home.

By the way I found my 3 mobile deal on the forum at moneysavingexpert - it's expired now but it's a good place to lok for the best internet deals.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.html?f=69