The biggest change is that I am now living in Costa Rica, which spawned a lot of other changes. Throw into the mix my purchase of a Barnes and Noble Nook Color, for yet another change.

My Nokia E71 is now inactive, as unlocking it for Costa Rica would disable its us on StraigthTalk. Since I still need a phone that works in the USA, I purchased a Nokia E5 for Costa Rica. I like it a lot better than the Nokia E71. I wanted to buy the Nokia N8, but the cost exceeded my budget. Besides, the Nook Color is my Android toy, and eBook reader.

My goals are small, mobile, and sharing resources between my HP Mini netbook, the Nook Color, and the Nokia E5. It is going to take a bit of work, but I am want to be able to share data between all three devices. I will document my efforts on this blog.

At the moment, reliable Internet access in Costa Rica is my number one challenge. Whether it be the Nokia E5 or the data card in the WiFi router, Internet access is terrible during the day and a lot faster from midnight to 8am. Both Internet services are through Kolbi, which is part of ICE. The cheapest rate is 100 colones (20 cents) a day for data access on phones for unlimited data at 512KB/s. The data card has the same speed limit for unlimited access at the rate of 8,500 colones ($17) a month. I have yet to see speeds anywhere close to the limit. The best speed I have been able to achieve was 74KB/s at 4am. During the day, there are burst periods where the rate gets to 24KB/s. I purchased  the high speed rate for the phone for a two week period, and the data rate did not improve. Slow is slow, so why pay for more. I am looking at other options, and will post my findings.

Before getting the WiFi router working, I connect my netbook to the Internet  using JoikuSpot on my Nokia E5. As with most cell phones, the Nokia phones only operated in Ad Hoc mode. The Nook Color, as does the Kindle Fire,  only connects to WiFi networks operating in Infrastructure mode. I have nooted my Nook Color, and am looking for a solution that allows the NC to connect to both Ad Hoc and Infrastructure WiFi networks. So far, the only solution I have found provides switching wpa.supplicant files between one that operates in Ad Hoc mode, and one that operates in Infrastructure mode.

I still have a lot of work to do, before achieving the environment that I desire.