Mobile Phone to Laptop Connection |
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NOTE If you understand all this page at first reading, then it is not for you! You are well ahead of the game. The target here is beginners. These notes are based on an article in the Winter, 2005 Hallberg Rassy Owners Association magazine written by Ivan Andrews to whom I am indebted for the use of his text. They were based on Ivan's experience sailing in the North Sea and Baltic. I have amended and re-written |
parts in the light of my own experiences in the Mediterranean. I have also added a section on data compression. A very detailed web page on all aspects of mobile telephones and their use with laptop computers can be found at my old friend and colleague, Peter Curtis' site. Links to other pages on this site dealing with communications are to be found on my Home page. |
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Introduction |
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Almost all cruising sailors use the Internet in some shape or form, often from cafés or libraries. The advent of "wireless networks" is starting to offer an alternative, but the usual and often most convenient or practicable way to access the Internet is via a PC and a mobile phone. Cell phone coverage is almost total around Europe within about 5 or 10 miles of the coast. There are aerials that can extend the range considerably further to 30 or more miles. An advantage of using a mobile phone connection is that once you have the system set up, moving between countries is, essentially painless. The issues of "foreign" mobiles and how to keep costs down, are dealt with below. |
To the phone companies, the Internet usually means WAP (Wireless Access Protocol) which is primarily a way to get the Internet displayed on a mobile phone. It is fine for some things, but many of us find it more convenient to get the Internet on our laptops. This uses the same underlying technology as WAP, but is subtly different. Some people use a PDA to get access to the Internet. Whilst these have some benefits, their small screens are awkward, and they are, very simply, limited in use and not sufficiently flexible. |
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Data Calls via GSM or GPRS |
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There are two ways to make data calls over a mobile phone. The first is to make a GSM "data call" much as a dial up connection on a BT landline. This piggy backs the data onto an ordinary mobile voice call, and results in a maximum speeds of 9.6 kb/sec . The drawback is that you pay voice call rates all the time the connection is "open", regardless of whether you are doing anything or not. GPRS (General Packet Radio System) breaks the data up into "packets" and squeezes them in between other peoples voice calls. This results in a much faster speed (115kb/sec) and has the benefit that you only pay for data sent and received. It is widely used for WAP and for sending Photos. |
The downside is that it has a lower priority than voice calls, and occasionally may get "squeezed out". (I have had this happen in Italy and Greece quite a lot. FS) GPRS connection is usually but not always be available. If you want always to be able to send and receive emails then it is necessary to be able to use either GSM or GPRS links and to change from one to the other easily. But, remember that GSM data connection speeds are slow. What this means in practice is that files are uploaded/downloaded at about 1/10th of this figure. A 10 kb email will take at least 10 seconds on GSM. Only use GSM for data if you really have to and there is no alternative. |
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Data Cards |
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The easiest and quickest way (in theory) of getting up and running is to buy one of the "data cards" that the phone companies sell. Normally costing about £100, they simply plug into a PCMIA slot in your laptop, and away you go. However, the chat rooms are full of people complaining about the |
reliability of these things, and they do not help you keep charges down if you go abroad. The reality is that if you have a modern mobile phone and a laptop, you have pretty well all you need, why pay more? All you have to do is get them to talk to one another. Now, read on....... |
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Getting Started |
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If you are going abroad, get it working before you leave the UK. Any problems will get sorted much more easily from the comfort of your armchair with access to English speaking help lines. Once set up, it should work abroad with no or few problems. There are four stages to go through to get things up and running. With good luck, you MAY get them all right the first time |
After that, a little cost cutting work is needed. |
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Connecting the PC to the Phone |
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There are three ways of doing this. Cable needs a phone with a cable socket to a serial port or USB lead. Infrared (or IrDA) allows the PC and phone to talk to one another if they are placed within sight of each other. The most reliable connection is via Bluetooth, a short range wireless technology, originally intended for cordless headsets. Unfortunately, few laptops come with Bluetooth and so you may need to buy a "dongle" (about £12 from Maplins) which plugs into the PCs USB port. Windows XP and |
Vista include Bluetooth software so that the CD supplied is usually superfluous. Whichever technology you choose, you will end up with the phone looking like a "modem" to the laptop, as though you plugged it into a BT phone line. A useful feature of Bluetooth is the radio connection which enables the phone to be put higher up, perhaps on the cabin roof or, even, in a bucket a few metres up if reception at chart table height is really poor! |
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Getting the Phone Settings |
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To use the Internet, the phone needs a "profile", which tells it which service to use. One way to do this, and necessary with older phones, is to speak to the phone company's "data" helpline. This might require a text message that sets up the phone. With modern phones, the menus on the phone should be self explanatory. On my Nokia 6300, I went to Settings, Connectivity and selected Bluetooth. That was all that I had to do. To set up the initial connection to the laptop, using Bluetooth, right click on the Bluetooth icon in the bottom tray, RHS. Then use the set-up Wizard. Select "I know the service....", then "Dial-up Networking". That should bring up a panel with your phone name (eg Nokia 6300), double click on this to connect to your phone. On the first occasion, you will be asked |
for a 4 digit password. Type in 0000 (or whatever you wish) and hit Enter. Your phone will bleep and ask "Pair with (your computer name)". Hit OK on the phone which will ask for the password. Enter your chosen password and hit the OK button. You are now connected and can dial either your GPRS or GSM number. Thereafter, to connect the phone to the laptop, simply right click on the Bluetooth icon and select Quick Connect, Dial-up Networking and the name of your phone. After the first occasion a password should not be required. But, if asked for a password, simply repeat the performance. A software disc supplied with the phone might well also have a connection wizard. This will be even easier and completely intuitive. |
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Because your phone will look like a modem, much of the setting up will be familiar or, at least, Windows driven.
Unless you are a young computer whiz-kid, this
will involve speaking to your mobile phone company.
With Windows XP, they will probably ask you to
go to Control Panel and open Phones and
Modems. Then select Modems, Bluetooth,
Advanced. They should then give a string for "Extra
Then go to Control Panel and open Network
Connections. A New Connection Wizard will guide you
through configuring the PC.
Username : web (Orange will tell you "user"
). The next section deals with the next phase, setting up or modifying your email account. |
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Of the two types of Email, POP/SMTP mail is the more cost effective as it uses servers to download emails to your PC for "offline" viewing and composition. Web based email services, such as Hotmail or Yahoo. only need an Internet browser, and so are almost always guaranteed to work in any Internet cafe. However, the surrounding graphics add considerably to the cost of downloading emails. They are a definite NO on a mobile phone. To avoid having more than one email address and/or to
avoid using a different email address when away,
a useful web based facility is
Mail2Web, a free service using your normal
home email address and password. To get Outlook Express to work correctly with GPRS you will need to make a couple of changes to its setup from that used at home. You can use your normal home ISP's incoming mail server BUT you cannot use your home ISP's outgoing server. |
To set up a
new outgoing mail (SMTP) server - go to "Tools,
Accounts, Mail, Properties, Servers. Leave
the My incoming Mail as it is.
normally. In
the Outgoing mail SMTP put that of your
phone provider. You will have to ask the phone
company for this address, it is not widely
published. (Vodafone's is send.vodafone.net,
with Orange it is smtp orange.net). One of the beauties of GPRS is that you do not need a UK ISP; the phone company provides the Internet connection. It can be useful to use a different Identity for your GPRS connection and to keep it separate from your normal land line connection. In Outlook Express go to File, Identities, Add a new identity and give it a name eg Bluetooth Clara.. When using the GPRS connection, go to File, Switch Identities. Address books and mail folders can be imported from one Identity to another. For ease of access, keep all your addresses in "Shared Contacts". NOTE For those using MailASail, there is no need to change the SMTP. |
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Using a GSM Connection |
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For occasional, minimum thinking use, this may be adequate. Having connected the phone to your computer, simply use your UK server just as though you were at home using a BT dial up line; but remember that calls on a mobile will cost more. From abroad, you will be using a +44 prefix to a UK server. In Outlook Express, Tools, Accounts, use your normal account settings. |
When aboard, whether you use your UK server or a local one is a matter of choice, your familiarity with different servers and the effort that you go to. I (FS) always used to use my UK server and telephone number. It was simple, but I had to be careful with usage or the mobile phone company got very rich. |
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What can go wrong? |
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With computers, anything! Well actually, almost everything. A big problem is that when the system does not work, if often comes up with this panel. If you click "More Info" all you get is an obscure error messages which might as well be written in Swahili. With caere and a modicum of luck it will work at the first go. Otherwise, perseverance, and help from the phone company, will always get you working. Experiences with company help lines varies but I (FS) have always found Orange staff to be well informed and understanding of an old buffer and his problems. |
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Email costs |
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The mobile phone charging system is a jungle through which the EU is now trying to hack a path. In particular, roaming charges have been a rip off. However, the rules are currently changing and roaming call costs are being reduced. Latest information, at the time of this revision is that this will not apply to GPRS ie data via email and web page calls.. Roaming costs have been about £1 a minute for GSM and £8 per mb (0.8p per kb) for GPRS (inc VAT and based on 2007 experience). Whether it is cheaper to use GSM or GPRS will depend on your usage. |
Some PAYG accounts do not allow data calls. This forces the user to a contract and which one will depend on your overall usage. Those wonderful and much hyped N minutes of free calls are useless when away from your home country. Again, this situation is easing and PAYG is becoming more feasible for data calls. The expanding availability of WiFi hotspots and the initiatives by T Mobile to implement mobile broadband services are changing the landscape. |
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Minimising costs |
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For anyone still using a GSM link it is most important to minimise the time that you are connected. With GPRS, download size is the important factor. In both cases, suggestions are to
That last may seem dangerous, but you will avoid much trouble by minimising download size. It also helps if your ISP has good anti virus and |
anti spam software. See also the
appendix to another page of this site for
more advice on minimising email costs.
The text
retrieval facility is useful to get web page texts at
much lower cost than using a browser. See
Saildocs or
MailASail . Further actions to minimise connection time are to
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* To my emails, I attach the following as part of my
signature - "Please note that I am using mobile phone connection. Please keep messages brief and do not send my message back. Pictures will not be downloaded and files will be converted to text.". |
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And for GPRS |
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If you are using GPRS it can be better to stay
connected if you may want to send more emails,
perhaps send an immediate reply to one just received,
are expecting a reply during your session or want to
look at a web page. There is a cost to connect and,
thereafter, mainly a cost on the data volume up- or
down-loaded but with a small ongoing cost to stay
connected as the computer keeps in touch with the
GPRS server. You can use the phone for a voice call
while still connected to GPRS. Putting the laptop
into standby will disconnect for you.
It will pay to experiment and see which procedures give the smallest total of sending and receiving as shown.. Re-connection will be cheaper than staying connected for a long time. Staying connected is cheaper than quick reconnections. As noted earlier, GPRS might not be available is some places. It can be useful to switch from one to the other at will. |
See, also, the section on Compression below. |
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Going Abroad |
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You can now dial from anywhere without having to
reconfigure the phone or the PC, however you will pay
for the privilege. Roaming data rates have been about
FOUR times as much per megabyte as when in the
UK. This is extortionate, and may well reduce over
time, but in the meantime, an effective way to get
the costs down is to use a "local" phone. The first probably is the locked phone. Most phone providers "lock" their phone to their network, so you cannot use it with a rival. The provider will unlock it for about £30, but your local "railway arch" provider will usually do it for less. A DIY unlock service for a number of types of mobile phone is at www.unlock.nokiafree.org and an online service is at http://ucables.com/remote-unlock-online.html |
It may be best to upgrade your UK phone before you leave. The phone company will let you keep your old phone, and you can use this for "local" SIM cards (so you have two phones). You can "pair" more than one phone with the same PC. You will
need a new "profile" for every country that you have
a SIM card for. (that is how the companies know a
"foreign" mobile from a "local"). This increases the
chances of getting the profiles on the phone
confused. One way round this is to "edit" the profile
yourself on the phone. If you compare two profiles
(it will be in the Settings /Data Communications"
menu on the phone) you will see that the only thing
that usually changes is the "Access Point Name" or
APN. If you edit this to the local value, it will
probably work. Usually everything stays the same on
the PC, although at least one country using *98# as
an access number (rather than *99#) but this is rare. |
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Email message Compression |
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One way of reducing costs is to use one of several compression packages such as ONSPEED .(probably best known from its advertisements in the press) or MailASail . Each offers compression services, but there are significant differences in the total packages. There is also. SmartCom, not strictly a compression service although it does reduce costs. ONSPEED compresses both outgoing and incoming emails. Having loaded and set up the software, you just send and receive as normal using your normal email account. It pays to watch their compression display carefully and, also, to monitor your mobile phone display for the total kb transferred. I had to contact ONSPEED to optimise my settings. ONSPEED has to set up a connection before any compression occurs. It is best to make the telephone connection using the panel above to GPRS, wait until ONSPEED says that it has connected before using Outlook Express. If it does not connect, then disconnect the phone and try again later. The setting up of a connection can be a substantial percentage of the total mobile phone bill. At a guess, between 5 and 10 %. The saving will depend upon your use per day and the nature of the messages that you are sending or receiving. Attachments of pictures, .pdf or .zip files are already compressed. Similarly for files of GRIB coded information. To send a fairly small email or emails, but not receive, it may be best to disable ONSPEED, make the telephone connection, watch the OE |
send/receive box and disconnect as soon as the messages have been sent. MailASail works rather differently to ONSPEED in that you set up a replacement to your existing email account. You then get a new email address eg joebloggs@mailasail.com although you can keep your old address and account, in which case MailASail will continually search for and forward emails to you. There is no handshaking overhead that occurs with ONSPEED. However, outgoing emails are not compressed. This is not a serious problem because you can control what you send and when. Experience over 2007 showed that MailASail is highly efficient. A major plus is that the system removes all formatting from emails and attachments. It removes images and pdf files.. Hence, you need not have a size block on incoming mail. Should you wish to receive an attachment with full formatting, including pictures, pdf files or an email that was sent in Rich Text Format you can still get the full version, but at a time and place of your choosing.
SmartCom is different again. Outgoing emails are reduced in size but not incoming. But, you can block incoming emails greater than a certain size and receive just the header. You then can decide whether to download or not. |
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Which service for you? |
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Cost is important because of the enormous charges that the mobile phone companies make for data calls, especially when roaming. However, cost is only one factor. Each service has other features that should be taken into consideration. ONSPEED costs £25 a year. With an average monthly usage of around 10 Mb before compression, my mobile phone bill was around £40 a month roaming, less than half what it would have been without a compression service. The disadvantage with ONSPEED is that you will probably want to have a size block on incoming mail. Further, it does not always connect and can be frustrating. There is a modest one off payment for SmartCom and no annual charge. The emphasis is on managing your connection whether by mobile or satellite phone At £240 for two years, £140 for one year or £90 for 6 months, the cost of MailASail is, on the face of it, considerably higher than ONSPEED. The greater speed of MailASail and avoidance of the handshaking |
overhead will reduce the total GPRS download size to compensate, at least in part, for the extra charge. There is no need to block large emails; that is a very real plus and one well worth considering.. The total MailASail service is very attractive. For example, there is a Web Diary link to upload information and pictures for friends and family at low cost. The latest version has GPS tracking so each time you mail in an update you create a track of where you have been. There is good treatment of virus and spam, also (importantly) free email technical support. MailASail is certainly well worth considering for long distance cruising yachtsmen. It has many attractions for those using satellite phones or terrestrial phones with GPRS. Perhaps SmartCom plus MailASail might be the optimum. They seem to be complementary. For the casual user, perhaps cruising for short periods, ONSPEED might be sufficient. However, the speed increase might make it worthwhile using MailASail even when at home and using a dial up connection or, even, broadband. |
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Web Page Compression |
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ONSPEED can give some very good compression of web pages when these are largely in text format. One particularly good example is the DWD 3 day grid point forecast. To download this from the web without compression means a download of some 140 kb. At roaming rates, this is about £1.40. The total cost in connecting to the GPRS server, connecting to ONSPEED and downloading the same page is about 20 kb. Even at roaming rates, this is about 20p, a very impressive saving.. On the other hand, to download a synoptic chart - say from those listed on my Chart Page, there is no or little saving using ONSPEED. |
Web page compression is really only useful when using links to pages of text, such as those on my GMDSS page . However, the best advice, is to try when at home and see which types of web page are compressed and which are not. On the
other hand, if you know what a web page looks like
and do not want the pictures the text retrieval
service using the
Saildocs can be very effective indeed. Send an email to
query@saildocs.com |
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Wireless Networks |
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The whole area of mobile data is undergoing a revolution and the landscape is changing rapidly. The good news is that wireless networks ("WiFi") are becoming more common, but you do really need Windows XP, which has reliable, easy to use software built in. Connecting up is as simple as selecting a network from the list and pressing the "Connect" button. Windows does the rest. The downside is that coverage from an access point is limited in range, and some of it costly. It is usually charged by the hour, or by the day, but unless you use it a lot, it may be cheaper to use a mobile phone. Sometimes there might be an unsecured privately owned WiFi connection that can be used. There are websites that suggest how best to use these. BUT, be careful. There have been reports of prosecution using a private unsecured link. Using WiFi you will find that Outlook Express will work fine for incoming mail but, as with using GPRS, you may need a different SMTP for sending mail. One way is to go to www.yahoo.co.uk and set up a free account there. Specify your normal home based email address to receive email, but set |
up a new one for outgoing mail. Then, in Outlook Express go to the Tools - Accounts menu and
You should then be able to send and receive emails just as at home through any WiFi connection. An alternative is to use web based services such as www.mail2web.com It is easier, for those using MailASail, because then there is no need to change the SMTP. |
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Security |
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Contrary to popular myth, and despite the dire warnings the PC tends to flag up, both the mobile phone, and WiFi (even "unsecured" and "hijacked" WiFi) are secure. It is probably more secure than using an Internet café. As for high security links like Banking, the connection between your PC and the Bank is encrypted, and using your PC ensures you do not leave a "history" |
around on someone else's PC to be interrogated. All
your "favorites" work too. It is only prudent,
however, particularly if using WiFi, to run
up-to-date Virus checkers and a firewall, as you do
not know where these networks have been, and
infection is a definite possibility. |
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Conclusion |
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You might wonder if all the hassle outlined above is worth it. Well we think so. In truth, most of the hassle is only when setting the system up. Once you have done so, things are largely foolproof. Familiarity may breed contempt, but it also breeds confidence. |
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© Frank
Singleton, December 2005. Amended November 2006 |