Recently Mark contacted BroadbandDongle.net asking for advice on choosing a Broadband Dongle for use with a Apple MAC (Using the Snow Leopard Operating System). Mark also wanted a dongle to act as a WiFi wireless router, so that other computers/devices can connect to the internet at the same time.

The latest Snow Leopard OS released in September 2009 has been known to have incompatibility issues with mobile broadband devices. Many suppliers were caught off guard with the Apple MAC operating system update, finding that dongles stopped working with the latest version of Snow Leopard OS. Orange and Vodafone were two of the first networks to release fixes, however, other networks have now followed suite so most dongles should now be compatible with Snow Leopard. It’s always worth checking the small print before buying to make sure the device is compatible with your system. For example, o2 include the following text in their terms and conditions:

Use of O2 Mobile Broadband is subject to a compatible laptop. Minimum system requirements are Windows XP, Vista, MAC OS X (10.4.7+).

I would strongly recommend that you don’t use a dongle as a WiFi wireless router – Broadband dongles tend to only run at speeds of up to 384kbps, and that’s if you are lucky and live in a turbo speed area. 384Kbps would not be fast enough to run multiple devices, play games online and stream videos.

I do recognise there is rare occasions when turning your 3G dongle into a WiFi network would be extremely useful, e.g. maybe you need a group of machines to have internet access whilst in a remote location. GreenHughes.com have a great tutorial on how to to turn your netbook into a 3G mobile broadband WiFi hotspot so I won’t try and reinvent the wheel.