You'll need an adapter for that, sir

Do you live in one of the houses that don’t have electricity sockets to run the essentials of life – so you have snakes of five-way adaptors everywhere?  My laptop is getting like that – all the USB ports are occupied –mouse – printer – dondle- which means I have to unplug one of those to plug in a camera or a memory stick or my external hard drive.  And this model is only six months old!  I need the equivalent of a five way electrical extension to be running at full speed and not be unplugging and plugging in various bits of hardware….

I am proud that I got my dondle up and running last month – and even overcame the problem of resetting my SMTP (allowing me to send mail through my e mail handler rather through a web based facility).  While the later works OK it is less than optimal.  No spell check, only basic text formats (no highlights or italics etc., available) and slow upload and download procedures.  All these are quite important for an editor! So while using a web based e mail application can be OK if you are away for a few days it was good to get the e mail package fully functioning.

The great and really surprising thing about my dondle is it actually costing me less to use than a fixed internet line.  I get 20GB via a SIM for 10 Euro.  As long as I don’t stream movies or video clips this is substantially less than I would pay for a fixed internet cable.  I charged it almost three weeks go and it is still going strong – far less than the 30-35 E per month going rate charged by fixed line internet suppliers.  True it takes a minute or two to identify the device and connect and it sometimes has bad days when the connection breaks – but in general it seems like a rather good deal.