Thread: Wireless Internet & PDA

You can't use a USB dongle on a PDA. The device needs a driver and they don't bother writing them for PDA's. Better to use a PDA phone where the sim goes into the phone itself instead of the dongle. For a PDA, you need to either connect to a wireless network or you can connect to a phone with a data plan using bluetooth.

Mike

Great thanks Mike.

There is a SD wifi card available for the iPAQ 1710 - that's pretty much the only way you are gonna get it to connect.

how safe is this wireless stuff from people hacking into it ?

Most wifi networks like the free ones at all maccas have some sort of security system like a key or passphrase. I wouldn't be worrying about security on the PDA there's not much on them and it's not shared anyway. It's the people providing the wifi who have to worry about security.
Wifi is different to 3G which runs on the mobile phone network but both are 'wireless'.
Mike

I'm surprised the connection speed is that low, i have a spare pc in my downstairs bedroom on my network using a usb wifi adapter and i get 300kbps download speeds on it and its behind a wall, a slate floor and about 15m away direct line. Speed shouldnt be an issue on a pda as you dont have enough storage space to require any real bandwidth ?

Normally wireless routers work faster than your internet connection. You should only notice that wireless is slower if you are transferring large files between pc's.

To illustrate the point, I have a wireless network here. My internet is Telstra Cable.

Imac (plugged directly into router). 9.49 mb/s (800mb movie 11 minutes)
macbook (wireless N). 9.29 mb/s (800mb movie 11 minutes)
Iphone (Wireless G) 7.4 kb/s

As you can see there should be very little difference between wireless and wired for internet.

As to the PDA on wireless... maybe it's time to update A $250 ipod touch has built in wireless.

All tests were done with speedtest.net. The test on the iphone was done with speedtest.net's iphone app.