Tethering with Bluetooth

Many of the venues I play bar poker in have free WiFi, but some don't.  When I'm out of the game I like to surf the web, or while running a tournament update the points or get an online email going.  Without access to Wifi, I can't do it.

Tethering is the process of connecting your cellphone to your laptop to allow for internet access from the phone.  It's a way of hacking into things for some people.  For others, it's a seldom known feature of the phone.  For instance, on Boost mobile unlimited internet access is included in the flat monthly fee of $50.  Once tethered, you can have unlimited internet for your laptop.

I should say that with Boost, it's an IDEN network and you have a theoretical limit of 19.2K for speed.  Cable modems tend to be around 3,000K.  It won't let you stream movies, but will allow for checking email in Eudora or running a telent session with PuTTY  I will of course have to give online poker a go with it..

All I had to do was find the correct driver file and install it on my laptop.  Or, maybe not.  Apparently tethering is a more or less built in feature of a bluetooth adapter for your laptop.  So I went to Best Buy and bought a Bluetooth adpater.  For five dollars more I got the low profile version.  Around $35.

Arriving a bit early for Thursday lunch at Tommy's Place, I eagerly opened my package and why was I surprised to find a CD with the driver.  My netbook computer does not have a CD reader in it.  So after lunch I went to the RocketFish website and downloaded the install package.  A few minutes later I was connected to the internet via my cellphone.  It works.

I'm looking forward to trying it out when I am at a venue without WiFi.  Or maybe when I'm in Atlantic City and don't want to pay $12/day for Internet access.