[Turtle]

So then the iPhone becomes the same as the built-in WiFi of your laptop.
Then you'd be able to connect to WiFi with the built-in WiFi on the laptop, or the one built into the phone. WiFi on the iPhone (or most Smartphones, Blackberry's, PDA's, etc.) enables you to check e-mail and do Web browsing without your computer, and without eating up cell airtime minutes to do it. A lot of people run around without carrying a laptop, but they have their cell phone, and a WiFi cell phone is just really, really kewl. But I'm really not sure of the advantage of using your cell phone's WiFi instead of the built-in WiFi on the laptop when surfing the net with your computer. Bottom line is, unless you have a data plan to use with the phone, you are still going to have to lurk in order to find a WiFi signal, whether you use the iPhone or the laptop's WIFi. WiFi is WiFi. In other words, you've already got built-in WiFi on the laptop, so buying an additional WiFi device isn't going to do anything different for your laptop than your laptop is already doing for itself.

The only magical shortcut to stealing cheap WiFi is to lurk at motels and steal cheap WiFi. If you're not within range of an unsecured, steal-able WiFi signal, no phone is gonna help with that. If you're out of reach of a WiFi signal, the only other option is a data plan (or satellite Internet, but now yer talking real money). If you're sitting at a Flying J you have two options, one is to pay Flying J for Internet access, and the other is to pay your cell phone company for a data plan, which is not the same as WiFi.

If you pay Flying J, you have two options with which to connect - one is to go inside and plug in a CAT-5 cable and have a wired connection to the network, the other is to have a wireless connection to the network using WiFi.

All WiFi is, is, it's a way to connect one computer to another, or to a network of computers via a network router, wirelessly, without using a cable. WiFi and the Internet are not the same thing, although getting onto the Internet via a WiFi connection is the most popular use of WiFi. Sure beats going into the building and pluging in a cable. Think of WiFi as a network cable, without the cable. Once you are connected to the network via WiFi, you then have access to whatever the network administrator allows you to have access to, being other computers on the network, networked printers, or to the Internet.

Bluetooth is like WiFi, in that it connects two devices together wirelessly. It just uses a different radio frequency than WiFi does.

An Aircard (or data capable phone) with a data plan is like making a cell phone call to get onto the network.

An Aircard (or data capable cell, like an iPhone, Treo, v9m tons of others), Bluetooth, WiFi, they are just three different ways to connect to a computer network. If the AT&T plan includes unlimited data, that's a good thing. But from everyone I've talked to that switched from Verizon to AT&T, the don't like AT&T much (as Lawrence has apparently confirmed again).


I've used my phone for both DUN and WiFi access, and for other than an emergency, I've found that it's better to use the laptop's built-in WiFi for Internet, and the phone for a phone. If I were to go with a data plan and use the cell for the Internet, I'd get an Aircard and keep the phone as a phone. The only thing I use my phone for that's anything like that is, I can connect the laptop to the phone via Bluetooth and then fax something from the laptop through the phone.