Novatel 2352 MiFi Vs. Huawei E5830

I’ve been using a Huawei E5830 MiFi unit for a while now and as much as it’s a great little device it does have a few problems that niggle me. The main two are lack of WEP security for the WiFi connection and no Mac software. The unit has to be configured via that software that comes loaded on it and this is PC only, once configured using a PC the Huawei works fine with the Mac over WiFi, but should I need to make any changes to the settings I need to find a PC to do it. Now most of the time this isn’t a big deal, but the lack of WEP security adds to this problem and here’s why. If I want to connect my Nintendo DS to the unit I have to reconfigure the WiFi to be “open” because the DS doesn’t support any type of security other than WEP, this means booting up my netbook, changing the MiFi settings to “open”, play with the DS online then change the settings back to secure once I’ve finished, and if I’m nowhere near a PC then this becomes impossible to do, it’s either that or leave the MiFI open all the time, which I’m not prepared to do for obvious reasons. So I got a Novatel MiFi 2352 to see if it was any better.

Unlike the Huawei the Novatel does support WEP encryption and uses a web interface to configure the unit (just like most home broadband routers do). This means that it can be configured from any WiFi device with a browser, so settings can be changed from any PC, Mac or even a mobile phone. This alone is a HUGE advantage over the Huawei. The WiFi security settings come with 3 profiles, open which has no security, secure which can be set up however you want and temporary which is set to WEP. Most of the time I have security set to WPA2, but when I want to play an online DS game it only takes a minute to log into the device from any web browser, switch the profile from WPA2 to either open or temporary and I can play online.

Both the Huawei and the Novatel come with a Micro SD card slot, this shows up as a mass storage device when connected to a computer. The advantage of the Novatel is that it is also accessible wirelessly and it can be set up with a shared folder, so anyone using the MiFi network can access the files on the SD card. I must point out that I have never tried this as I don’t have a spare micro SD card, but this is how it should work.

Both units should be able to work tethered to a computer via the supplied USB cable. For the Huawei this was straight forward using a PC. You plug the device in, install the preloaded software, configure it and you’re good to go. That wasn’t the case with the Novatel, I failed to get it working on both Mac and PC. On the Mac I installed the drivers but they failed to show up in System Prefrences – Network. With the PC I plugged it in, the computer recognised a device and started to install the drivers then failed, I was running Windows 7 on the PC and Snow Leopard on the Mac. I didn’t look into the problems any further because I have no intention of using it tethered so didn’t want to waste any time, I just thought it was worth mentioning.  This does bring up another small problem with the Novatel, if you plug it into your computer via USB to charge the unit, it disables the WiFi and as I couldn’t get it set up to work via USB the device becomes useless. There are a few solutions to this problem. WiFi is disabled on the Novatel as soon as it detects a data conection via the USB port so you can either use a power only cable, or split the outer cable open and cut the two data wires inside, I think it’s the white and green ones. But the easiest solution is to use any USB cable, but when plugging it into the computer, only plug it in half way. If you look at a USB connector you will notice that the two outer prongs are longer than the inner two, these outer ones are for the power. So by only plugging it in part way the power connectors make contact but the two data ones don’t.

I’m now using the Novatel MiFi as my main mobile broadband device and keeping the Huawei as a backup. The lack of a web interface, Mac software and WEP on the Huawei is too much of a disadvantage for me.