Looking for a MiFi

In November, I made a couple one-day trips to Nairobi for meetings. For each trip, I hauled my laptop because I needed to access to email and to be able to work on some documents. I also carried along my iPad because it contains all my reading materials (books, magazines, PDF documents, newspapers).  Ensuring Internet access comes in the form of a small 3G USB modem.*

* Not all hotels and guest houses have Internet access. On the first trip, I forgot the modem and was lucky that the guest house had high-speed Internet access. Lucked out that time. On the second trip, I made sure to pack the modem and sure enough the other guest house provided no Internet service. 

During the second trip, I started wondering if I could get by with just my iPad. Though the iPad is not a replacement for a laptop, I wondered if I could make do with it for short trips. For this to work, the iPad should allow me to accomplish two things; edit documents in a word processor and access the Internet.

Getting a word processor is not a problem, there are text editors and word processors available for the iPad and given my needs I opted to purchase Pages for the iPad. It is a good basic word processor that does pretty much what I need.*

* Well, I hope it does, I'll follow up with a full review of Pages as a basic travel word processor.

Internet access is another matter. Unfortunately I don't have a 3G iPad, I have the WiFi version. When I bought my iPad, I opted against buying the 3G version. I did this because I did not know if I would have the iPad in my hands before leaving for Kenya and I wasn't sure of the 3G support here.*

* As it happened, 3G iPads were arriving about the time I was leaving and 3G coverage in Kenya via Safaricom is pretty good. 


The 3G modem will not work here because the iPad does not have a USB port (even if it did, I doubt that it would support a 3G modem).  My iPhone does have support for WiFi tethering, but for what ever reason, Apple does not enable this feature.*  Bluetooth tethering doesn't work either, Apple doesn't allow the iPhone to connect to the iPad via Bluetooth.  I could jailbreak my iPhone and install MyWi ( non-approved iPhone application) and then I could tether my iPad to the iPhone. However, I really don't want to jailbreak the phone right now.**


* Evidently Android phones can do this, but until the Android is as classy, neat and as easy to use as the iPhone, I'll pass.


** Hats off to the iPhone Dev Team for the great work they do to allow folks to jailbreak their iPhones. With their work, I was able to jailbreak and unlock my previous iPhone (a 3GS) when I first came to Kenya. The only reason why I jailbroke my 3GS was to unlock it.  I now have a factory unlocked iPhone 4, so the only reason to jail break the phone is to install MyWi.


What I really need to solve my connectivity problems is a MiFi device.* The MiFi is a portable HotSpot that uses an Edge or 3G "cellular" network to give users access to the Internet. It is a pretty neat device; small, battery operated and would allow the iPad to access the Internet.** So, I'm on a quest to find a MiFi in Kenya. Who knows if they have arrived in Kenya.

* I suppose I could just buy a new iPad with 3G support and I plan to as soon as the 2nd generation iPads are released. 


** I had access to one in New York and we let our faculty use them when there were on the road. Most everyone liked them.