....... As far as the data is concerned, I am wondering if you could use a laptop via a data cable to a mobile, or place the SIM in a dongle, but use the internet settings intended to be used for a mobile?
First, I must correct what I said yesterday in my reply #1. The guy at the O2 store let me know that he had double checked with the O2 network, and found out that he was mistaken. They do have a FUP, and it is set at 500 MB.
This is somewhat disappointing, though it is still a lot better than what was available on O2 Pay & Go before.
Up until now, it cost £7-50 per month to subscribe to a WEB Bolt On, which only gave 200 MB. So 500 MB, although it can hardly be described as 'unlimited', is nevertheless a lot more generous.
With regards to Mikael's question about cables and dongles, my own experiments show this to be network dependent.
'3' are very good, and you can get away with using your data any way you want, which is surprising - seeing that they charge half as much, for twice the amount of data, on a Pre-Pay internet monthly Add On, than they do for their contract users !
However, you definitely cannot get away with such tricks on the T-Mobile network. Any Virgin user who tries to use their SIM outside of their mobile 'phone soon discovers that the data charges mount up very quickly, and will be charges FAR more then 30p a day. ( My own experiment cost me ~ £8 I seem to remember ! )
Now the case of O2 is quite interesting. I have a pay & go dongle, which I got for the free WiFi access, but I cannot use a WEB Bolt On on a pay & go SIM in it at all. O2 seem to recognize that it is not a dongle SIM !
So that rules out dongles I believe.
I have not been able to try using a cable to connect, as none of my O2 mobiles will take one. What I can say, however, that if you have a netbook with an embedded SIM, these do look like it is being used in a mobile to the networks, ( '3', O2, and T-Mobile included ), so the answer is to use such a netbook if you want to connect to the internet via a PC. I believe that to be a safe option on all networks.
HTH.