Alright, so I've got a Nokia N95 that I use to tether my N810 tablet to the internet. I've been using Bluetooth tethering this entire time. I realize that the N95 sucks down battery life like no one's business and there have been quite a few times where I was out and the phone died, so I'm looking for alternative ways of getting internet to my tablet.

I've read up about Joikuspot and I know some of you out there use it. It seems like a good program, very usable, etc...

Which of these two uses the least amount of battery life, bluetooth tethering or Joikuspot? Any other advantages/disadvantages to using each?

Sorry to perhaps disappoint you, but in my experience Bluetooth is a very energy-efficient medium, compared to most. It has very little impact on battery life on either side of the connection (phone, tablet, laptop...).

Using Joikuspot would mean replacing BT as the link between your phone and tablet with Wifi, and battery life would suffer *a lot*, especially on the phone side.

Clearly the main drain here is the cell data link while the phone is connected, and there's not a lot you can do about that : all I can think of is, use EDGE instead of 3G, or get a phone that's more efficient, or with a bigger battery (E series like the E61 or E71 tend to be better at this that N series I think).

Also, an external battery can come in handy to top the phone off in an emergency.

IMHO Joikuspot is only interesting if you want to share your 3G data connection with 2/3 people in a room - and then you'd better have that phone plugged in :-)

The free version only allows http through a proxy - I couldn't even get https to work from the tablet as documented. For a full router app you need to buy it.

I have the E71 and N810.
Using BT tethering I get hours of battery life.
It is the N810 that would 'die' first and the impact on the E71's battery is marginal.
When I use Joikuspot it drains the battery much faster (would still hold for a few hours). I only use it when traveling and need to hook multiple devices (N810, laptop, iPodTouch...). As fpp said, it is also great when you're sitting in a coffeeshop w/o wifi... (but then I usually charge it).

I meant with friends...

Thanks for the responses, guys.

Too bad we're in the off-topic forum... although the topic, itself, isn't :-)

/me too I have joikuspot premium but it drains my e90 like mad.

I was expecting to get completely fried by people if I posted this in General... maybe Reggie can bump it over there.

Not surprising... not only is the phone running both 3G and Wifi (instead of BT) at the same time, but it's also acting as a software router (with NAT), which must be keeping its poor CPU at quite a fair clip...