Unlike my first iPad, my iPad 2 is only wifi.
So if I want to use it outside my house I have to keep my Virgin wireless modem dongle charged. This is one way to access the internet on the iPad 2, but not always practical. What happens if the wireless wifi modem runs out of power when I'm out?
This past weekend I took a look at my 3GS iPhone and discovered the next best thing. Since it's on iOS 4.3, it has the personal hotspot setting and can be used with either bluetooth or USB.
My missus on the other hand can access the wifi version of the personal hotspot. She owns an iPhone 4. Not that she would use it, as she has less data on her part of the phone bill to play with. So for her, personal hotspotting is out.
I took a look at how practical bluetooth was for connecting the wifi-only iPad to the iPhone.
I activated bluetooth on both devices and paired them, then activated the personal hotspot (see above image). The only hard bit was then waiting for a web page to load.
It's obviously faster than the old dial-up, but the lead-in time before the page loads reminds me so much of our earliest form of connection.
Once the page loaded, though, I was kind of impressed. Here was a way to connect to the net on the iPad without having to carry around the dongle and a way to use up that 1 GB I hardly touch on my monthly iPhone bill.
Just to be on the safe side, I reset the usage setting on the iPhone to keep a careful eye on how much of my monthly data is used.
So if one of the kids loses the wireless dongle and I'm in a rush to go somewhere with the iPad 2, at least now I have an alternative. Just switch on two settings on the iPhone, one on the iPad and I'm still net-capable.
Now if only Steve Jobs would allow 3GS iPhones to have the wifi version of the personal hotspot...
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