With the addition of free Wi-Fi last year at my apartment complex, I disconnected my DSL and home phone service. The free Wi-Fi is great, but every other month or so the service is non-existent. Whether building management forgets to pay the bill or accidently switches it off, I do not know but it happened again this weekend. What to do to connect to the Internet? I considered a 'dongle' from my cell phone service provider, but that would require an extra data plan. Ditto with a netbook. Why would I want another data plan when I already had one for my Android smartphone? To my way of thinking, I should be able to just access the Internet from my computer through my cell phone aka tethering. Talk to your cell phone provider about your options and they all have a cost and usually another subscription.
Enter the brave new world of Android phone applications such as Photoshop Express, Skype, Autodesk Sketchbook Mobile, Quickoffice, Retro Camera, Blogger, Borders e-Reader, etc. In my search for a free tethering application I found 'Klink' by Faveset LLC. The demo is free, but the full version is a flat, one-time fee of $2.99. Well, after trying the demo I knew this was the app for me. I had a couple of false starts trying to get the configuration correct, but as they say in the techie world RTFM. Once you get the app working, it is excellent. If your Android phone is 3g or 4g, you will get those connection speeds. Instead of a dongle you connect your computer to your phone via the phone's USB cable. NO ADDITIONAL DATA PLAN is necessary! And that is a beautiful thing. Check out the application and see what you think. http://www.faveset.com/klink
In regards to the legal aspect of tethering, I view it the same way I view software installation licensing. With software the common thought has been that you, as yourself, cannot use an application on two machines simultaneously, so installation is allowed, for example, on your desktop computer and your laptop computer under the same license. [Remember, I'm saying the common thought...] With tethering, you access the Internet from the connected machine (computer) not from the connecting device (phone) itself. Thus you are using only one data connection, or license, at a time. It makes sense to me. Does it make sense to you?
