Samsung Galaxy Tabs For Dummies
Book image
Explore Book Buy On Amazon

Your Samsung Galaxy tablet has no trouble sniffing out a digital cellular signal, so it can access the Internet just about anywhere. Your laptop might not be so lucky. But hey: You’re already paying for the digital cellular signal, right?

So why should you bother getting a digital cellular modem for the laptop, as well as buying into another cellular contract, when you could just use your Galactic tablet as a portable modem?

Sharing the tablet’s Internet connection is not only possible but also relatively easy.

A more personal way to share your Galaxy tablet’s digital cellular connection and to get one other device on the Internet is tethering. This operation is carried out by connecting the tablet to another gizmo, such as a laptop computer, via a USB cable. Then you activate USB tethering, and the other gizmo is suddenly using the Galaxy tablet like a modem.

To set up tethering on your tablet, heed these directions:

  1. Turn off the tablet’s Wi-Fi radio.

    You can't share a connection with the Wi-Fi radio on; you can share only the digital cellular connection.

  2. Connect the tablet to a PC by using its USB cable.

    Specifically, the PC must be running a current version of Windows (not Windows XP) or some flavor of the Linux operating system.

  3. Open the Settings app.

  4. Touch the Connections tab (if necessary).

  5. Choose More Networks or More Settings.

  6. Activate the USB Tethering option.

  7. On the PC, when prompted to specify the type of network to which you’ve just connected, choose Public.

To disable the tethering option, repeat these steps but disable the USB Tethering feature in Step 6.

  • Sharing the digital network connection incurs data usage charges against your cellular data plan. Be careful with your data usage when you’re sharing a connection.

  • You may be prompted on the PC to locate and install software for the tablet. Do so: Accept the installation of new software when prompted by Windows.

About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book author:

Dan Gookin combined his love of writing with his gizmo fascination nearly 30 years ago to produce more than 160 informative, entertaining books demystifying technology. Perhaps his most famous is DOS For Dummies, published in 1991, which became the world's fastest-selling computer book and launched the entire For Dummies franchise.

This article can be found in the category: