I just finished setting up my laptop and cell phone so that I can go online from anywhere.  It’s not comparable to DSL speed, but it is fast enough to surf around and use SSH/VNC/Rdesktop. The hardest part was actually not the technical part, but finding specific information what I need to do from my cell phone provider!

After doing a bit of searching I finally found out that what I wanted (surf the internet with my netbook using my cell phone as a modem) seemd to be the “websessions” option at Vodafone. Now you can either buy dedicated hardware that you plug into your usb port (costs money, need to remember to bring netbook and adapter, needs strange software), oder sou use your cell phone and special software from vodafone (which didn’t work at all for me, couldn’t find my phone even though other software has no problems synchronizing my google calendar to my cell phone), OR you just set up a  internet connection in your cell phone with the APN event.vodafone.de and hook it up as a modem in windows via bluetooth. Unsusprisingly I use the last option since it requires neither additional hard- nor software. Just grab the netbook, connect to the cell phone in my pocket via bluetooth, and go online.

Depending on how often I use this I may even have a look into a flatrate. Only problem I’ve had so far, is that my cell phone (a sony ericsson w880i) sometimes seems to hang up the bluetooth connection, and refuse to reconnect until I turn bluetooth off and on again. I’ll have to check if there is a firmware update available.