What do you do when you’re out and about with your ultra mobile PC, and there’s no wireless or copper connection available for you to plug into?  Well, ya tether it to your Blackberry phone and keep on browsing!

Actually, most modern mobile phones will allow you to do this.  Some over IR, or bluetooth, or in the case of the Cloudbook, with a USB cable.  You’ll need to check with your mobile phone manufacturer and carrier for specific information on how to use your mobile phone as a modem.

For myself, on the AT&T network, all that was required was a copy of the Blackberry communication drivers and a copy of  AT&T’s Communication Manger software.  Tell the software you have a USB connected Blackberry, and hit the connect button.  Presto!  Off and surfing the Internet.

AT&T uses the EDGE network (same one the iPhone uses), so it’s not as fast as some other carrier networks are.  But, the communication manager software does have this acceleration ability (using the Bytemobile client) which will scale back images to a lower quality so that you don’t have to download as much data for an image.  You’ll suffer some quality degradation on the image, but at least you don’t need to stuff as much data down the minimal pipe you’re browsing with.

This is perfect if you need to get on the Internet for some brief browsing, or are in a bind where you can’t get to a wired/wireless connection.  I’m posting this blog entry from the Blackberry connection, and a little earlier ordered a external hard drive enclosure over it.  It’s definitely usable even in today’s world of high bandwidth multimedia sites.

Technorati Tags: AT&T, blackberry, bytemobile, cloudbook, tethered modem

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