Perfectly boring
by Volker Weber
Last week I told you about the GlobeSurfer III. A week has passed and I will pack it up and send it back. What has happened in between? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The GlobeSurfer maintained a connection to T-Mobile, from EDGE to HSPA depending on the signal quality. Twice the 17" MacBook had difficulties to connect, but the MacBook Air and the Samsung NC10 performed just nicely. So I feel inclined to blame the MacBook.
The Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times" never applied to the GlobeSurfer. It just did its thing. Setup is extremely simple. You insert the SIM, turn it on. You connect to the (still) open WLAN or an Ethernet port and point your browser to 192.168.1.1. A wizard takes you from there. It wants to know a new admin password, the APN to connect to (internet.t-d1.de for T-Mobile), the SIM PIN. Then it configures your WLAN security, and then you are done.
The GlobeSurfer has numerous other capabilities. For instance it can receive SMS messages, connect a plain old telephone, share a printer or a disk, terminate a VPN, wash the dishes. OK, I made the last one up. Never tried any of these. Judging from the other experience I have no doubt it does these things equally well.
The device earns the editor-refuses-to-give-it-back award, but I have a promise to keep. :-)
IME is the distributor, but they can tell you where to buy the device. If you ask what it costs, it is probably too expensive for you. ;-) If you want to know it anyway, list price is 379 Eur.
