[celstu1]

Hi Patti,
Ive looked into many options for internet. This is what I've found in my area. It tends to differ a lot from area to area though.
- Satellite was not a good choice for us due to amount of trees and position of the dish and even winter weather can affect the connection of the dish, so we nixed that idea.

- I tried DSL but our provider for that up here (1 and only) does not support a 64-bit laptop machine (which most new ones are now) so I couldn't get it to work. (that was the cheapest alternative, and they may support it now as that was 3 years ago).

- If you get a Verizon air card you pay month by month but at a minimum it's $50 a month for limited connectivity.

Soooooo ... believe it or not... we were literally down to 1 choice. I have a droid smart phone with the standard $30/month basic 3G service. Then we pay for Cable internet which is $60/month. I also have my ipad which has a data plan on it for $20 a month. So overall we pay $110/month to be WIRED! If I had made my phone into a 'hotspot' it would cost me $50 a month (still need the home internet though, so still $110 a month).

So overall it was the same to put internet to my phone & iPad. When I am home or somewhere that I can connect to a wifi I use that, not the 3G on the iPad. This saves me from spending more than $20 a month on 3G for the iPad. The benefit of having both the phone internet and the iPad internet separately is that I don't need my phone with me to use my iPad (if you do the hotspot plan on your phone, then your phone has to be within range of your iPad all the time). IF I made my phone a hot spot, then I couldn't use the wifi on my iPad if say my phone was dead or not with me.


I hope all that made any amount of sense! haha