I’ve used it for an hour and decided it’s going back to the shop.  I may just throw it through the door and hurl abuse, but I hope to have calmed down enough to go in to collect a refund.

On paper it’s an appealing device – you insert your USB broadband dongle and it creates a WiFi access point…  Ideal for the MIR crew when we’re out and about.  Every operator will offer one – we saw T-Mobile’s effort recently.  So what’s wrong?

It doesn’t have a battery! It was advertised both in the marketing materials and on Three’s site as having a battery (UK Gadgeteer has the story)…. many sites wrote this up. It doesn’t.  It needs a power supply.  Three have changed their site without any comment and it’s confused customers. £70 for something that’s tied to a power supply? Bah!

It’s slow. Oh my god it’s slow. Speed tests are notoriously hard to do, but I never managed to get the router to operate faster than 25% of the speed achieved by using the dongle directly.  Pages crawl down.  T-Mobile’s unit didn’t feel this bad.

I love Three – the Skypephone, X-series and cheap broadband, but this really is a massive disappointment

If the lack of the promised battery doesn’t bother you, I’d still recommend waiting for reviews of a few other models to come in – I couldn’t live with it.

For those interested here’s some more pictures and interface screenshots:

Just noticed that a 3 branded usb modem router is now for sale on their website:

then click on Wireless routers, £69.99 without a contract – very tempted indeed.

Just look at how small they must be – the Ethernet port looks MASSIVE on the side of the tiny router.

The thought of a portable wireless hotspot anywhere, (especially at Dad’s house, where the 3 coverage is good upstairs, but non existent downstairs – Router upstairs, whole house now covered!) makes this a MUST BUY for me.

More info here

Happy days,

Trevor.

Thanks for the tip Trevor!

Posted by email from MIR Live (posterous)

Hope you’re well. Great stuff going on at SMSTextNews. Still enjoying it hugely. Love the vodcast (is that the right word?!).

Just wanted to flag up something I stumbled across while looking for a new router which might appeal to SMSTN audience. It’s a Draytek model with a USB port that allows you to plug in your HSDPA modem and use that as either primary or backup net connection (along with the usual ADSL). Cool. In theory then, as long as you could find power, you could create a portable wi-fi network pretty much anywhere. It costs less than 200 quid and has VOIP prioritisation to boot. It gets very strong reviews too.

http://www.draytek.co.uk/products/vigor2820.html

I’ve never seen anything like this discussed on the site, so I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but I thought your dongle-dangling audience might be as fascinated as I was! I’m on the brink of ordering the 2820Vn…

In case it’s of interest…

Muchos, muchos interest Mark. Nice one. Has anyone tried out the 2820Vn? It’s a smart idea to include USB dongle support. Indeed I wonder if some of mobile operators would consider selling the device along with their dongles?

Speculation from some folks apparently in the know (salt, salt, pinch of course) is T-Mobile are due to hit the market with a ‘router’. Now. This could definitely be a US-style ‘T-Mobile@Home’ service. Or it could be something a little bit more exciting, particularly when various sources are mentioning it in the same breath as T-Mob’s USB stick.

We’ll see, eh?