With so many options, you might be curious why I ditched my free WiFi Hotspot connection for a MiFi device on Verizon. I have used PDANet, Wireless Tether for root users and the built in USB tethering in the Cyanogen Mod Android Rom to get online for the past year. For the most part these methods worked and so long as I crossed my fingers I could get online for a short period of time. Unfortunately the more often I used these methods, which didn’t come with a monthly fee, the more often they failed.

The scenario often went like this. I would be in the car for a 30 minute trip to work. I could start a post OK, but after about 10 minutes the connection would slow down to around 3 kb/s. That’s practically zero and is tied for speed with a wired connection I had in the remote village in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam! If I rebooted the phone I could often get a usable connection, but by that time I had wasted the trip and had to get to work. It also resulted in wasted productivity due to lost posts. You may have better luck if your phone supports tethering out of the box, but then you’ll still hae to pay and share your data usage with your normal smart phone usage.

When Verizon introduced new lower priced MiFi data plans that coincided with the launch of the iPad on Verizon I knew it was time to switch to a dedicated device. Having tested a MiFi during CES last year I already knew how nice it was to have an instant on connection that just worked, I was just trying to avoid an expensive monthly fee.

I’ve had my Verizon Mifi ($50 for me, but available free with a 2-year contract currently) for a little over a month now. It has lived in my ScotteVest and gets me connected in seconds making it a perfect companion to the iPad or MacBook Air which are ready to use in just as little time.

Now that I have a dedicated device, not only do I not need to worry about draining my Droid’s battery, but I also don’t have to worry about a dropped connection every 10 minutes. I chose the 3GB plan for $35 a month which gives me enough data to do the webwork I need to do on the go without costing an arm and a leg.

If you have decent Sprint service in your area, be sure to check out the MiFi on Virgin Mobile which has no contract and offers unlimited data for $40 a month. We went with Verizon because Sprint’s connectivity is poor in several areas we frequent. Here’s a review of the BroadBand2Go service from Virgin Mobile.

So, in a word, the reason I chose the MiFi is — reliability.

We always recommend finding the best tool for the job at hand and using it instead of trying to shoehorn an imperfect solution into the mix and in my case the MiFi was the right tool.

How do you stay connected on the go?

Why I Chose MiFi Over Tethering or a SmartPhone Mobile HotSpot is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.

I started the trip using PDAnet for my Droid, but was very excited to get a review MiFi unit from Novatel late the first day so that I could get connected without any cables or fussing around with software.

With a freshly charged MiFi, and an Eye-Fi card on loan from Xavier, I set out to cover day two of CES and immediately recognized the benefits of the MiFi unit over tethering to my phone. Leaving the Venetian I hopped onto a 10-15 minute shuttle ride over to the big show and while I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of connecting my Droid for such as short period I was able to connect my HP Mini 1000 to the MiFi quickly and knock out a post I had leftover from the evening before. Tethering my Droid wouldn’t have been practical in this quick cramped situation.

The MiFi unit also came in incredibly handy throughout the show as I had it turned on in the pocket of my ScotteVest for practically instant on connectivity wherever I ended up; be that on the floor, a corner of the USPS booth or camped out at RunCore’s booth in the Netbook Zone.

When the entire Notebooks.com and GottaBeMobile team covered the Intel keynote the four of us each connected a computer to the MiFi unit as well as Xavier’s Eye-Fi card which he used to provide the rest of us with almost instantaneous access to his photos that were uploaded to his Flickr account. This situation highlights one of the biggest benefits of a MiFi card over any tethering solution; the ability to share a connection and do so without any extra installation.

Connected with MiFi wishing for a backlit keyboard!

If I wanted to share my PDAnet tethered Droid with the rest of the group I would have had to pull some workarounds in Windows to share over the built in WiFi or lend the connection to one person at a time and even then they would have had to install the software and USB drivers and hope it worked. Because the MiFi shares over WiFi the only setup is typing in the network password and clicking connect.

The ability to upload pictures from anywhere with a Eye-Fi card and a MiFi was another positive at the show after a helpful Eye-Fi rep showed me how to fix a user error that prevented the images from uploading when the notebook was on one connection and the Eye-Fi card on the MiFi. This connectivity is one of the things I will miss most as I pack up the MiFi unit and return it to Novatel tomorrow. The fact that combining a MiFi and the new Eye-Fi Pro X2 means you can keep taking photos without ever running out of room may be enough to cause my wife, who is a shutterbug, before I do!

As far as speed goes during the comparison I tested both PDAnet and the MiFi several times; both moving and standing still and the speeds were very close no matter which device I used. That said the MiFi was faster by about 200 Kb/s up and down while in a moving vehicle that was traveling between 35 and 45 mph. It is likely that this difference was due to small changes in location and networks rather than a clear advantage but nonetheless the differences existed in my non-scientific tests.

Really the only trouble I had during my test was uploading large files to YouTube, but I wouldn’t have even attempted that when tethered and it’s possible that part of that was due to network and YouTube saturation at CES.

If you couldn’t already tell, I am sold on the MiFi. Not only is it dead simple to use, easy to share and tiny but it just works. Not once during my use did I run into an issue like you see below that popped up with PDAnet on a few occasions. The MiFi device is one of the simplest ways to connect to the internet on the go and offers several advantages over traditional tethering such as the ability to share and Eye-Fi connectivity.

You can currently get a MiFi device from Sprint or Verizon for practically nothing if purchased on Amazon with a contract. If you don’t want to pay between $40 and $60 a month you can pick up a Pay-As-You-Go MiFi device and use it only when you need it which may fit those of us like myself who travel less frequently better than adding another monthly data fee.

For the time being I haven’t decided to pick up a MiFi, only because while I continue to have a day job that puts me behind a desk 9 hours a day without much travel I don’t connect as much on the go to justify purchasing one. If that situation changes, or Verizon lets you add a MiFi to the same pool of data my Droid uses, I will be much more likely to pick one up.

Bottom Line: If you need mobile access from Verizon or Sprint a MiFi is the device for you — it does so much more than the USB cards they both sell and when purchased from Amazon a MiFi is as about as cheap as you can get.

Here’s what the MiFI looks like when it’s up and running.

Novatel MiFi Review: Easy On The Go Connectivity is a post by Josh Smith from Notebooks.com.