I have a confession.  Until recently I was living in the 20^th century.  I was still on a dial up connection for the internet.  This wasn’t by choice; I was being held hostage by internet providers.  I live in a rural area, but only 5 miles from civilization.  You can imagine my frustration when I was told that my neighborhood was not scheduled to receive broadband in the near future—meaning within a year.  The frustration stemmed from the fact that people living a quarter of a mile from me were able to get it.

I purchased the MiFi 2200 from Verizon.  It is a small unit, about the size of a credit card and less than 1/8 of an inch thick.   It is basically a WiFi router which is battery powered and has a cellular modem built in.  If you have a cellular signal, it can power up to five computers.  The speed is good.  Tests show averages of 800 Kbps to 1.3 Mbps for downloads and 500 Kbps for uploads.  Most websites load in a reasonable 5 seconds, depending on how complex they are.  Speeds may decrease when split among several computers.

The setup was easy.  Trust me, if I can do it anyone can!  I was able to get up and running in about 15 minutes.  The only issue I had was with the range of the unit.  I had to find the right spot in my house to keep the unit so all computers could get a good signal. 

The best thing about this device is that it is portable.  You can take it with you and have internet virtually anywhere. Since I am often on the road at craft fairs, this is a plus for me.  I can take my laptop with me to process credit card orders and never have to worry about getting a signal.

 The price was reasonable compared to other options.  The unit was $50 with a mail-in rebate and the service with 5 GB monthly data allowance is $59.99 per month.  This seemed fair to me considering I was paying over $25 per month for dial up.

If you are looking for a good alternative until your neighborhood gets high speed internet, you should check out MiFi.  So far, I’m thrilled.  Like most items, you have 30 days to return it if you aren’t satisfied.  It’s well worth a try.