First pick what carrier and plan you want to go with, then buy a hotspot compatible with the plan. They’re available in the carrier stores, best buy and Amazon for $30 - $50. You just plug a SIM card in and it converts cell signal to WiFi signal. From the carrier’s perspective, it’s no different from any standard data plan, whatever plan you were originally planning on using will work with this.
Modern tablets are great bang for their buck performance wise but their cheapness also essentially makes them disposable from a durability perspective. Separating out the cheap tablet component from the cellular modem gives you added flexibility.
The same high cost-per-gigabyte that makes cell phone data too expensive for heavy use. Because it’s effectively the same thing, even through a “cut-rate” MVNO.
If you’re a light user, it’s fairly cost-effective. But “light user” is a vanishing breed, since you get a lot of network overhead (i.e., network use you didn’t specifically ask for) from media-heavy advertising and damn-near-mandatory OS and application updates. My in-laws inadvertently burned through an entire two-month LTE data allocation (60 day 2 Gigabyte card) because they didn’t block Windows from trying to download the crud to “upgrade” to Windows 10. This made them realized they’re not really savvy enough to police their usage, since so much network usage is pretty stealthy, so they put away their LTE MiFi device and went back to dial-up.
A cell phone can be your hotspot. A cheap option is to by a low-cost smartphone (check out BLU or older used devices) and sign up with T-Mobile or similar unlimited data providers. Even ATT offers a reasonable plan if you bring your own device. If she is currently a cellphone user, the cost difference is not much.
Without video, one can survive quite well with 1GB or less a month.
Fortunately, Mom’s computer is old enough (Mac G4) that it doesn’t even try to automatically update. And I’ve already installed a hosts file to block most ads for her, which helped her situation some (but not enough).
It sounds like the proper course here would be to start by buying a mobile hotspot and corresponding plan, and using it with her existing computer. That might be enough to solve most of her issues, and if not, we can then also get a cheap WiFi tablet (it looks like one of the black-and-white Kindles might be the best option, there).
Before you spend money on a tablet, take her to a store and have her use one. Capacitance tablet and phone screens don’t work well for people with “dry” fingers, as happens when people age. Imagine the frustration when she’s trying to poke at the screen and nothing happens.
Does the Surface have an arrow cursor and behave like a regular PC when you attach a keyboard?
I agree with jtur88’s comment above. My problem with tablets isn’t so much the typing, it’s placing the cursor for editing, selecting text, wanting to delete forward using the delete key, tabbing, dragging and other things that are second nature with a keyboard and mouse, fidgety with a trackpad, and pretty much a pain in the butt to impossible with a tablet. If someone has been using a mouse & keyboard since day 1, I see much frustration if she gets an ipad or android device.
Do not get a kindle e-reader (black and white) to surf the internet. A kindle e-reader is a fantastic substitute for a book, and a reasonable substitute for a newspaper (if available in a kindle edition). It is a pretty poor e-mail reader or web browser. Kindle fire or any other android or apple tablet are much better for that.
Yes. An e-ink e-reader is great for what it’s designed for (reading text), but for surfing the internet, it’s almost, but not quite, as useless as an Etch-a-Sketch.
My recommendation would not be a tablet but a Chromebook. They are quite a bit cheaper than the higher end tablets, come with a full keyboard, long battery life, super quick startup. You can find ones that come with a built in SIM card and Internet connection that you can subscribe to (usually T-mobile).