Im contemplating becoming a Othernet user buying the dreamcatcher. Can anyone give me some guidance, is this set up viable? Can anyone speak from past experiences? Please let me know of the capabilities of this application. Can you surf the web? How does this work is their a main website you have to login? Please shed some light as i want to give this a try.
While I would absolutely recommend you buy a dreamcatcher and participate in this project I feel that you have misunderstood its goals.
Firstly, its not “free” internet access. The point of the project is to experiment in low bandwidth data transmissions for use in 3rd world countries. Currently only Wikipedia entries and some news sources are broadcast. In a school environment these would be greatly useful to teachers.
I have run across many potential users whom have expected to get free Internet access from Othernet. This is simply not the case. We are all participating in a data casting experiment. The experiment is paid for by the purchase of the dreamcatcher hardware.
Secondly, you would be participating by adding to the pool of users whom would be testing the system. The more eyes looking at the content the more issues/bugs/whatever will be found.