"I would love for the family to chip in and buy me a dongle for my birthday."
If my daughter Zoe was astonished by my request she didn't show it. I know it's a strange present for a 50 year old menopausal woman, but when you're strange and menopausal you just know what you want. To the uninitiated, this oddly named device plugs into a computer USB port enabling access to the internet.
I am aware that, to most people, my gift choice is rather like requesting a lady shave for you wedding anniversary or an electric whisk for Christmas, but I had a plan in mind which required internet access and no online connection in which to carry it out. With money tight, my husband John and I cancelled our landline subscription a while ago and made do by using pay-as-you-go mobiles phones to receive calls. It really cut costs but we had to forgo our internet connection. It was something I didn't miss much until now.
A couple of months ago, my favourite woman's magazine contained an article on how to make extra cash; suggestions ranged from selling handmade arts and crafts to offering your services as a virtual PA. In fact the internet was sited as holding a wealth of opportunities for a budding dot.com entrepreneur. My interest was ignited by reference to 'subsidising your income by doing paid online-surveys' and I thought to myself how hard could that be? By chance, the same magazine held a leaflet advertising mobile phones and mobile broadband connectors (dongles). A pay-as-you-go mobile connection seemed the answer to my humanist prayers.
The first step, in my money making venture, was to check that I could obtain a strong enough signal for a prospective mobile internet connection and to compare costs and monthly price plans. I checked out all the mobile websites for information.
For the first requirement, it seemed you simply typed in your postcode and with a click of the mouse I was given a resounding YES there was a signal in my street more than adequate for my needs. It was very reassuring as I knew my area had a history of signal problems, specifically for the GoConnect* mobile network but hey, that was a couple of years ago.
All the pay-as-you-go broadband dongles were about the same price to buy (you get one for free if you subscribe to their monthly rental plan) so I based my choice on the cheapest download package; GoConnect looked like the one for me. John wasn't so convinced but, as I profess to be the computer expert in the household, he didn't argue his point too much.
With mobile internet connections, you don't pay for surf time or a daily/monthly connection, you pay for Megabyte and Gigabyte downloads. £10 for 1Gigabyte appeared to be the cheapest top-up package available, which would cover me for all my e-mailing, downloading of survey forms and surfing the net. It lasted for 30 days or 1 gigabyte of usage, what ever came first. You can use up lots of megabytes uploading music and video files but, although useful for the family, it wasn't a necessity for me. Anyway, if I wanted to, I could always purchase an extra top-up for that privilege. Let me rephrase that, they could buy extra top-ups.
So choices made, Zoe purchased and presented me with my brand-new 3G Ahyme** E160G USB modem a few days before my 50th birthday.
I'm not sure she got any joy from giving me this gift. Giving me a dongle for my birthday didn't have the same ring to it as say, giving me a piece of jewellery or a watch; maybe she felt it was too practical for such a significant day, or maybe it was the off-putting name of the device. I expect she dreaded being asked what she got her mother for her 50th and having to explain what this strangely named contraption was and why it wasn't something you could treasure forever and wear on special occasions. Anyway I thanked her with all the excitement of a child on Christmas morning and like that child proceeded to put it to immediate use.
The whole family had to fend for themselves that day, I had little thoughts of meals or household chores, (they are never greatly on my list of priorities anyway) I was on a mission to get connected. I enthusiastically plugged it into the laptop; the incorporated driver automatically downloaded the software and...nothing. I tried again...and again...still nothing.
Picking up the instructions, which I'd discarded in my hurry to get on with the task, I who always slag John for not reading the instructions, scanned them for some hint as to where I'd gone wrong. The manuals technical content was minimal, basically saying plug the thing into a USB and off you go.
