My night job is as an ATM Integration Engineer for Alcatel-Lucent. For the last couple of months we've been contracted to AT&T to assist in upgrading their 3G network around the country.

Last week I was assisting in upgrading equipment in a 2nd-tier city out west in the middle of the night. When I went to bed at 7 p.m., my internet connection was working. Thanks to a storm, when I got up at 1 a.m. to do the work (remotely), it was down.

No internet is bad. There are 15 people in the field and remote supporting the upgrade. My not being available would have postponed everything and screwed up all 15 of their schedules for at least a week.

However, thanks to a quick download of Joikuspot (registered version), I was able to get online using my N900 and do the work. Total time from panicked online purchase to up and running was 15 minutes. Work spent online (T-Mobile) using my N900 has a hotspot -- 4 hours.

Pointing out to friends with iPhones that if I had bought one of those, I (and all their iPhone kin in the unnamed western city) would have been screwed because of the lack of tethering -- priceless.