MiFi makes nice tool for summer drives

EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. (LIN) - Many parents turn to electronics to keep their kids busy in the car, but when that great computer game loses its novelty or the kids play through the movies loaded on an iPad, boredom can come back. But a device that's in thousands of briefcases across the country may help extend the fun: the MiFi 2200 intelligent hotspot from Verizon Wireless.

To be fair: Other carriers offer different versions of the MiFi. This review focuses on Verizon's offering, which the company provided for testing.

The MiFi ($49.99 with 2-year contract, $269.99 without contract), is an itty-bitty battery-powered device, about the size of half of a deck of cards, that creates a Wi-Fi hotspot for up to five devices.

Normally, the device is for work: streaming sales presentations, doing e-mail and the like from the road. But when it takes off its suit and tie and puts on a T-shirt and shorts, it still shines.

Setting up the device is a snap: simply charge it and turn it on. It's preconfigured with a unique WPA password, so the network is pretty secure and works with nearly every Wi-Fi-enabled laptop in existence and most Wi-Fi-enabled portable devices - emphasis on most. More on that later.

After you power it up, you just need the information printed on a sticker on the bottom of the MiFi to set up whatever device you're using - your laptop, your iPad, your Wi-Fi-enabled fishbowl. (I made the last one up.) Just hit connect and, voila, you have Internet access.

And since it can handle five devices at once, multiple kids can share the connection without having to share their gadgets.

While the MiFi certainly doesn't offer the same speed as a cable modem, it's still speedy enough for most uses. The video quality, for example, was pretty good when I used the Netflix app on my iPad to stream the original BBC version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" at my apartment. And the video didn't stutter - a testament both to steady speed on Verizon's network and good design for Netflix's app.

The battery life is certainly adequate, too. I wasn't able to test it too closely, but most of what I've seen on online reviews from consumers and professionals put the battery life at about 4 hours when you use it with one device. (Your results may vary, depending on how much data you push through and how many devices you have at once.) It may not be long enough for a road trip, but the microUSB port should work with many car chargers.

Back to the "most" part of connecting most Wi-Fi-enabled portable devices. Because the MiFi uses WPA security by default, at least one device I tried to use - my Nintendo DS - won't connect. According to Nintendo, you can't connect any Nintendo DS game to the Internet with WPA, and only the browsers and game download functions on the DSi and DSi XL can use it.

However, the MiFi's online instructions do specify how you can use a computer to reconfigure the MiFi to use whatever Wi-Fi settings you want - WEP or WPA, your preferred network name, etc. So with some computer-based preparation, you could get it set up for the DS to work.

The other challenge the MiFi faces is its cost. You can do a month-to-month plan, but in order to do that, you have to pay the full retail price of $269.99. With or without a contract, the monthly access fee ranges from $39.99 for 250 megabytes a month to $59.99 for 5 gigabytes a month. That's quite a chunk of change for a road trip. Fortunately, the MiFi is useful enough that you could get it for work and also use it for fun.