How to fix poor image quality (compression) when using T-Mobile Web 'n' Walk on a Mac

Update: I've been told this is also a possible fix for users experiencing upload issues with Three Mobile Broadband.

This has been covered before here: Hacking T-Mobile Web Proxy, indeed I discovered the fix from that page so all credit to lewiz.org.

However, this is such a fundamental issue as far as I'm concerned that I think it needs more publicity. T-mobile are selling mobile broadband packages and as far as I'm concerned that means the ability to view a webpage how it was intended to be viewed. Not as though viewed on a blurry 256 bit screen.

The problem is more threatening on the Mac because there is no apparent way around it at all. In IE on Windows if you hover over an image you see a tooltip explaining how to increase the quality of the image.

The solution is to use Firefox with an extension installed called 'Modify Headers'. You'll need to configure the extension once after its installed. Click Tools and then Modify Headers from the main Firefox menu bar. Then, you'll see at the top of it's window a drop down where you can choose 'Add', 'Modify' or 'Filter'. We want to choose 'Add'. Then in the next text input enter 'Pragma' (without quote marks) and then in the second text input add 'no-cache' (again without quote marks). Click the add button to add this rule. Then you need to add another rule. Again choose 'Add' from the drop down, then enter 'Cache-Control' and 'no-cache' into the two text inputs. Add this rule and make sure they are both enabled, they should have a green dot by them. Thats it. You should be able to surf away as you expect now.

Of course its still regrettable that one can't use Safari. If anyone knows a way to make Safari modify headers please let us know.

Using a Huawei E170 (T-Mobile Web 'n' Walk USB Stick) with Mac OS X Leopard

My mobile contract recently expired and instead of upgrading with a new mobile phone I chose the Huawei E170 T-Mobile Web 'n' Walk Stick. They seemed a bit confused at this request at first and had to 'speak to their superiors' but eventually agreed that there was no reason that I shouldn't be sent the USB Stick. This means I can add on the Web 'n' Walk Plus or Max packages as and when I need them at the discounted rates when using them as add ons.

To get the USB Stick to work with Mac OS X Leopard though you'll will need to do a few things for yourself as the Web 'n' Walk stick manager software crashed repeatedly when I tried to use it to connect. Here are the steps:

1. Plug the Web ‘n’ Walk stick into your mac.
2. Open System Preferences and then ‘Network’
3. You should see a message about new connection devices (I think two are added for some reason: ‘DIAG’ and ‘HUAWEI Mobile’)
4. Select the 'HUAWEI Mobile' device in the left column
5. Enter *99# into ‘Telephone Number’
6. Click ‘Apply’ and then ‘Connect’

You should now be connected using your modem. Simple really! I actually noticed once connected you can open the Web 'n' Walk stick manager software to monitor the connection. Considering it's this simple I think its a bit misleading that T-Mobile say the device isn't supported on Leopard. Feel free to share your experiences below in case there are other issues.