Most of the time people order a mifi device only to be disappointed when it arrives. This happens when they take out the device only to find out that they cannot connect their desired devices to the mifi. If you have ever been in this situation you’ll know that the natural reaction at this time is to look towards the door hoping you can give it back to the delivery guy to take it back to where it came from!
Where to start from when you get your mifi device
Check to see if everything is in place
To start with, you have to open the mifi case to check if the battery is installed. If the battery is not installed, you can look for it in the package and put it into the device. After this, you can plug the mifi into a wall socket and charge the battery fully before you make use of it for the first time. The SIM card should be found under the battery (as seen with most devices anyway). If it is not installed on receipt then install it yourself. Simply take out the battery and reinsert the SIM before putting battery back in position. If the SIM Card is not in place, your mifi device will not work.
Confirm System Requirements
Before you unbox your mifi the first step you should take is to ensure your computer’s operating system is supported by the device you just bought. This is very important if you are buying any of the new generation Mifi devices. Anything below Windows 7, XP and Vista may not work with most mifi models of today. The XP home and XP professional operating systems equally work. If you are a Mac User, then your operating system must be OSX 10.4 or higher. If your operating system is anything older than the ones mentioned here, you may not be able to activate and connect the device. This explains why mobiles and tablet would be working when connected to a mifi device and your older computer would not connect.
Activating and connecting your mi-fi device
If you purchased your device at any of the providers’ stores, it should come pre-activated but if you find out that the device hasn’t been activated (there’s usually a text that will tell you this) call the customer service number on the pack or take it to any of the stores of the provider you bought the device from.
When this is sorted, you can now get back to your computer, turn it on and equally turn on the mifi device. On your computer, search for wireless connections. Users of computers with a windows operating system will have to select “View Available Wireless Networks” to see the mifi connection while MAC users will have to select the “Airport” icon that is located near the clock. Simply choose “Mifi” from the available networks and then you can enter the Network Key as it is found on the back of your Mifi device. After this is done, you can open a browser and the welcome page of your provider should appear.
What to do when you encounter problems with your Mi-Fi device
If after going through the processes above your browser isn’t opening any pages, you will have to do a little bit of troubleshooting. The user guide that came with your mifi should help you with the steps you should take but you can start by calling customer care to verify that your account is actually active. They should also be able to tell you if the plan you signed up for is available in your location. If they give you an affirmative answer, the next thing you should do is to restart your computer and hold down the power button of the device to turn it off. If this fails to work, you then have to restore your device to the default factory settings. To do this, you have to remove the back cover of the device and insert anything that can get into the master reset button hole that is located at the side of the battery. After resetting the device, you have to wait until the computer detects a network signal and then enter the Network Key again from the back of the Mifi.
How to boost the signal generated by your Mifi device
To do this, you could purchase additional hardware like a car kit or an external antenna, but most people would rather not go down this route as one of the key reasons for purchasing a Mi-fi device is its portability. So what other ways can you boost the signal on your Mifi device?
- First, you can move the device closer to your computer or your tablet/smartphone. A good distance between the Mifi and the device is 40 feet but by making the distance as little as 10 feet, you will improve the speed you are getting on the device.
- Is the battery fully charged? A fully charged battery will help the device to generate a stronger signal so if the battery is not fully charged, and you are not satisfied with the speed, you are getting simply plug in the device’s charger.
- If you are doing data intensive activities on the device the signal strength will be affected. So as soon as you start noticing any lags in data strength, simply check to see if any paused files or torrent downloads/uploads resumed without your knowledge. The heavy usage may not be from you, so remember to look around the house to see who else is sharing the connection with you. Do not forget that your mifi subscription has limits imposed on it so if you are doing heavy surfing in it, you will are likely to exhaust your allocation before time. It is always advised that you save any data guzzling activity for when you go out to where you have fibre optic or VSAT connections that do not have any data caps or download limits attached to them.
With all of this you should be able to enjoy your mi-fi device.
