Motorola Droid USB tethering made easy with PDANet

Decided today was the day to set up USB tethering on my Motorla Droid running Android 2.0. I'm getting ready for a business trip and I'm always amazed at the places that you can't get a wireless connection. USB tethering allows me to always have a fallback cellular connection (usually 3G on Verizon's network) for those type of emergencies.

I love the products produced by June Fabrics. I used their product to intermittently tether my Windows Treo 700W -and it got me out of some odd jams. Essentially it was it's like using your cell phone as a 3G modem (without having to carry separate devices).  June Fabrics couldn't make the process any simplier:

  1. Download the install application from http://www.junefabrics.com/android/
  2. Begin installing the application -the installer walks you through all the steps nicely. I did need to enable a setting to allow the application to be automatically pushed form the Windows XP PC to the Motorola Droid.
  3. Plug in you phone. I'm using the USB tether mode, but it also supports Bluetooth tethering. The appropriate USB driver was installed.
  4. Launch the PDA net application from the phone.
  5. Launch the PDANet application from the PC -little icon in the system tray
  6. Roam and surf.
June Fabrics couldn't have made the process any simpler or more painless to use my Motorola Droid and cellular network as a backup when wireless (or reasonably priced wireless) isn't available. I enjoyed the simplicity and stability of their Windows mobile version greatly. In fact it's one of the few Windows mobile version that I paid for a full license for. It also seems to be a simple and light application on both the phone and PC side that just does it's job flawlessly.

Currently, I'm running the free version. It's nice that nothing is crippled in the free version of PDANet for Android. The price for the full version is $29, which is a bargain. I think I paid $39 for the previous version. Sure beats paying $10 a night for hotel wireless, just to make a quick VPN connection to check in on a server.

A few nice features are:

  • when tethered over USB it's also charging the phone
  • widget on the phone shows connection and bytes transfered
  • author also provides a twitter account to follow up on the latest developments
  • look forward to utilizing the Bluetooth capability in the future
  • developer has been very responsive with enhancements and responding to questions over the years
June Fabrics -thanks for another great product!

Comments

  1. DaveDecember 16, 2009 at 1:46 PM

    Correction: I believe the free version of PDANet does not support https

    ReplyDelete

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