Mifi Virgin Review

Overview
The Novatel MiFi is a credit card sized device that connects you to the world wide interwebs wherever you are. It connects to your carrier's 3G network and generates a little WiFi network for up to 5 devices.

Update (6/17/2011): Mifi on Virgin seems to be sucking majorly. It keeps booting me off and wedging itself. Not sure why it sucks so bad now.

The Details
Once you turn on the device, you'll see your wifi network, which you can then connect to from any wifi enabled device like your laptop, PSP, netbook, PS3, whatever. Bam, you're on the internet. I've used this device to work from cafes, cars traveling at highway speeds, bus rides, everything, maintaining a persistent ssh connection to work.

The cost depends on your carrier. Currently there are three carriers that carry MiFi, I use Virgin Mobile because they're the cheapest and have no contracts or ridiculous fees if you go over your MB. If you run out of MB, you get disconnected and you buy more, no ludacris fees. I usually go for the 100Mb for $10 for 10 days. Since I mostly use text based ssh sessions with a few visits to company internal websites, I use about 1.5Mb per hour. If you're sitting there watching cat videos on youtube all day, you'll obviously burn through more.

The device itself cost $150 with Virgin. Other carriers are cheaper if you sign a contract, but their MB fees are higher. It all depends on your usage, really. You'll have to do your own math. I use MiFi for 6 hours a day, 2-3 times a week.

The Good
The latency is surprisingly low and the connection stays up. Most of my work involves persistent ssh connections and my user experience is better than any cafe amateur-net.

The MiFi sports all the usual config you'd expect from a wireless router. I wouldn't use the mac id filtering because you could lock yourself out of the device if your laptop craps up. Instead, you can set the maximum number of devices to be one instead of five, this way you know that only you are connected to it.

Once you run out of MB, you can still connect to Virgin Mobile and order more MB. The Virgin site also tells you how many MB are left and when they expire so you're never in the dark. I've run some network usage monitors and their count is pretty accurate.

Since it's pay-as-you go, you can opt to not purchase MB for a span of time (max 1 year), so if you won't be using your MiFi for a week or a month or more, you don't have to pay for a service you're not using (if you go with Virgin Mobile).

The Bad
Website loading isn't that zippy. It's adequate though. The throughput and latency can sometimes be sucky in the same spot that was fine the day before.

The cost is still pretty pricey considering you're only getting 1Mbps. There used to be a 300Mb for $20 for 30 days option but that is no longer available.

The MiFi device will stop generating the wifi network when you plug it into USB. This is a real drag, but I believe it's because USB does not provide enough power. There is a power adapter you can use, but of course you'll need an AC outlet. You can buy a data pinless USB adapter and this will allow you to connect MiFi to USB and fool it into thinking it's connected to the power adapter, but the battery will just run down slower (9 hours vs 4 hours). When connected to USB (with data pins), the MiFi goes into "modem mode", but this is not supported by Virgin and may jack up your computer as it installs a bunch of jacked up drivers onto your computer. I have never been able to connect this way. In fact, it bricked one of my laptops.

The Alternatives
There are usb dealies for your laptop and really fat devices you can plug those into to get a similar MiFi setup, but it's laborious. MiFi is nice because it all comes in a nice little self contained package.

The Verdict
If you're on-the-go and sick of crappy cafe wifi networks, MiFi is for you.