Which broadband 3G dongles work best with an Apple MAC?
CommentsI read somewhere that some mobile broadband dongles won't work with Mac operating systems. Is that true and, if so, which providers are affected?
It's true that there are ongoing issues surrounding using mobile broadband with MAC OS X Snow Leopard. The problems are largely due to faults with the Huawei modem technology within the 3G Dongles supplied by T-mobile and some other mobile broadband providers.
Luckily, there are some quick fixes that can resolve these issues.
The problems will affect dongles offered by mobile broadband providers including:
- 3's Huawei E169G
- T-Mobiles' Web 'N' Walk Stick III - a rebranded Huawei E170 and
- 02's Huawei E160.
Referring to their USB models 120 and 620, T-Mobile state that, "you should not use this with MAC OS X 1.6 (Snow Leopard). It is currently incompatible and can cause serious issues with system stability."
In fact, most 3G sticks have had a similar problem at some point in the past as a result of poorly written code by Huawei.
I could write extensively on what's wrong with all the provider's products but for your
benefit I'll focus on the two providers that have come out on top in terms of providing answers and solutions to this issues: Orange and Vodafone..
Their 3G dongles, we can safely say, are working fine with the Apple MAC OS X Snow Leopard so they'll be your safest bet as new mobile broadband providers.
Orange have gone flat out to resolve any issue between their dongles and the MAC OS and have come up with their own connection manager which comfortably works on the following operating systems: Mac OS 10.4, 10.5, 10.6 (Snow Leopard), Win XP, Vista and 7.
Orange last made a statement about the problems on the 17th November so the correct software should be installed with any Orange 3G dongles bought from now on.
Incidentally, Orange have a number of very competitive mobile broadband offers at the moment and were recently voted top provider in a YouGov survey.
The other mobile broadband provider to come up trumps is Vodafone. I can talk from first hand experience here: an ex-flatmate of mine had a MAC and I had a Vodafone 3G dongle she wanted to borrow.
Initially it didn't work but by downloading the latest software from Vodafone's website we had the 3G dongle up and running in no time. The latest version for the Vodafone 3G Dongle is v3.04.10.00 and is available to download from the Vodafone site..
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