If you follow me on Twitter you will know that I have had some ups and downs with Novatel's 2352 Intellegent Mobile Hotspot. It was a rocky start, but the story has a happy ending. This is a small device that combines a mobile broadband modem with a WiFi hotspot allowing you to connect up to five devices to the Internet while out and about without the need to install drivers. It is along similar lines to 3's Mifi device, in fact outside the UK it is called a “Mifi”, so maybe we should just say “it's a Mifi”. I tried it out with various tests to see how it performs.

It's a sad fact that most of the mobile operators, in the UK at least, sell their mobile broadband solutions with no support for Linux computers, despite the popularity of this operating system on netbooks. There is one notable exception though; Vodafone, which has a research and development team dedicated to open source called Betavine and produce the Vodafone Mobile Connect (VMC) application which enables you to get more out of your mobile broadband. Despite its name, you don't have to be a Vodafone customer to use it, in fact I've been testing it out with my 3 UK account. VMC has been available for some time, but just recently an updated version has been made available and downloads created that target Ubuntu Netbook Remix and the new Dell Mini. The application will do the basics such as managing connections, but also has SMS functionality, usage information, signal strength and upload/download speed indication. If you use the e169g-switch tool currently, I've made a new version which will work with VMC.

As you might know,a new version of Ubuntu was released a few days ago adding some new features and polish to this already fine operating system, and I've been trying out not only Ubuntu itself, but also some other members of the Ubuntu family of operating systems. You can find a list of features on the official announcement here: http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-8.10-desktop. What always remains striking here is that Ubuntu preserves the tradition in Linux of offering users real choices for their computing experience, the user is in change of their computer and can compute how they want to. Ubuntu was always traditionally aimed at the desktop, then a server product was developed, and now a lot of work is being carried out into producing mobile versions of Linux. As this is an open operating system it is possible to mix these experiences together to your requirements. I upgraded from Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop using an alternate install CD and found the whole experience was very smooth, once I put the CD in, Ubuntu asked me if I wanted to upgrade and it worked out what was required and happily upgraded.