A day with EV-DO is like a day with no compromises
My day started at 4:30 when the alarm jolted me out of bed. Yes, there IS a 4:30 in the morning too. The early day was because I went into Big Oil Co. in downtown Houston where my work day started at 6:15, also in the am. When I work at Big Oil Co. I have an office and I set up my HP 2710p to get a bunch of work done. Even though they have WiFi available since they are not my only client I don’t like all of my email passing through the Big Oil Co. servers which would violate my confidentiality agreements with other clients so the first thing I do is plug the Verizon v740 ExpressCard EV-DO modem so I can tap into the Rev. A speeds of the fastest wireless broadband available to me. I connect to the Verizon BroadbandAccess network first thing and I stay connected to it the entire time I am working in the office there. The bandwidth is so good I forget I am not on a WiFi connection and I rarely, almost never in fact, have trouble with my connection. At one point today I received three emails from someone that had attachments from 7 MB to 14 MB big and they came in so fast I didn’t realize how big they were until I opened them in PowerPoint. Mid-morning I had a meeting on another floor so I swiveled the screen into slate mode and headed off to the meeting. It wasn’t until I started receiving email that I realized my connection had survived a ride in the elevator and excursion to a conference room buried in the middle of a floor in the 30+ floor high-rise. The connection never faltered. I love my EV-DO.
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My day with T-Mobile is like a day back in 1990.
I too woke early and got into my client’s office. No WiFi, so in goes my T-Mobile card, navigating through the connection manager software I get connected with 4 bars strength.
Open Outlook and synchonize. While it is doing this I get a coffee when I get back I see that it is still working. 5 minutes later, 12 e-mails (without attachments) are downloaded to my machine.
Oh the nostalgia! All that is missing for my retro experience are those wonderful “eeeeghh oooogh” tones that used to tell me that a byte of information was being transferred to me.
Its a shame that Verizon will slash and burn your EV-DO account when you hit 5GB…
I use 3G now and again – my experience is a bit mixed, but my main problem with it is – if I use it for a while it gives me a headache. I much prefer WiFi for that reason.
I bash Verizon as much as the next guy but it is the best network bar none for 3G. I have been using it very heavily for years and have NEVER hit 5GB. I don’t P2P files and only do mild YouTube video watching occasionally so my point is if you follow the TOS you cannot exceed 5GB normally. That’s not just me talking that is years of actual usage talking.
I think they just throttle you back to 200 kbs if you exceed 5GB, but its still a lot of data. If you used it every day all day, it would be easy to hit 5GB early on in the month.. at least I would. I used it once while on the road to stream music through slacker.com (stupid, I know) and when I checked the usage, that one session was close to 2GB of data down. I agree its hard to hit 5, but every day of more and bigger files, it gets easier. Two years ago isn’t a viable comparison to todays huge file sizes and increased volumes of email and IM’s and and and…
Must be nice. I’ve been dropping calls all day. I usually have 2-3 bars of signal on my XV6700, but today it’s been bouncing between no signal and one bar with very spotty EvDO. I wonder if they lost a tower.
At work I have basically no usable signal at all, but that isn’t Verizon’s fault as hardly any RF makes it through the concrete and steel “bunker” where I work. All mobile carriers suck in that building.
James, where did you get the express slot to pcmcia adaptor? Thanks.
Jonathan,
http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2007/09/use-expresscard.html
Hey LUVMYUMPC – try dialing *228, option 2 on your phone to update your network information. Sometimes changes in network coverage aren’t picked up on your phone until you update it.
I’m a Verizon subscriber with a Motorola Q and the $15/month option to use it as a laptop modem. I wish the Q was rev A compatible, but alas it is not, and it’s slender size is it’s main selling point (if I couldn’t put it in my back pocket, I wouldn’t have it with me most of the time). Still, I am pleased with its performance when using it as a modem. The ability to use the Q standalone and as a modem makes it painfully clear just how horrible Windows Mobile and Mobile Internet Explorer are.