4 posts tagged “usb modem”
Eee's and 3G mobile broadband should be a match made in heaven. In theory, one perfectly compliments the other. The only sticking point is out-of-the-box compatibility. Some of these dongles do work with ease - you plug them in, go through a short wizard and wham, bam, thank you ma'am, you're in business. But other dongles don't play nice.
The trouble is not knowing which ones work and which ones don't when purchasing one. 3 UK's website doesn't differentiate between the different modems they provide. And, though I've yet to try, I doubt the staff in the High St mobile or PC stores would know either (actually I'd put money on no one knowing in my local PC World yet pretending they do!)
It makes you wonder how many of these get returned to the shops because the user with an Eee (remember those e's stand for easy this, that and the other) couldn't get them to work and has given up with frustration. I can also imagine some poor soul ringing up 333's tech support guys in Mumbai and being told to take the battery out! ;o)
I've given up trying to get my trial one working with my Eee PC 900. I'm taking the SIM out and using it in my phone instead, that can then be connected to the laptop. I'll be putting my phone's SIM in one of my trial Skypephones and see how well I fare using one of those as my main phone for the next few days.
To see how popular 3G internet is with Eee users one only needs to go to the EeeUser forums. There´s 90 threads with mention of 3 alone, hundreds about HSDPA and probably quite a few about Voda as well.
The picture above shows (a rather grainy) image of a 'One For All' AV sender. The SCART plug (for those of you outside of Europe, it's the part with silver pins) simply fits into the back of a TV and the rest of the device bends up until vertical.
In my opinion this is how USB 'dongles' should be made. It makes far more sense than jutting out to the side and needn't get in the way of typing. I'd imagine if done right, it'd be less prone to accidents than one that sticks out to the side. With a hinge (like on the One For All above) it could still be used horizontal if need be.
I've been using 3's Mobile Broadband extensively since Saturday. As a trialist I can use it as much as I want, it's truly unlimited! In the real world, 3 offer packages of 1GB, 3GB and 7GB (Lite, Plus and Max respectively) - unlike their handset-only offerings such as X-Series, there isn't the option of unlimited ("fair use" or otherwise).
I've taken advantage of the unlimited-ness to download a whole bunch of videos using Miro. So much so, that I'd have easily used up all of the 'Plus' allowance in one day! Not something I'd recommend paying customers do.
The fact that I can so easily download that much over the mobile network in a matter of hours is kind of amazing considering what speeds were like just a couple of years ago. Even though I can't get the the 2.8 Mbps speed that the service goes up to in Turbo coverage areas, I'm still getting speeds comparable to what a BT landline offers in this area. And as this neighbourhood doesn't have cable, it's a welcome choice over ADSL.
As I had Miro downloading videos constantly and consistantly for a couple of hours, I was able to see where best to site the laptop and sit, myself. The garden turned out to be the best place - but it didn't improve speeds as much as you'd imagine. Taking the USB modem out of the port, Blu-Tacking ('Blu-Hack') it to the top of the laptops screen and connecting it back up via the supplied USB extension cable - is by far the easiest and most effective way to boost your broadband. This worked better than the 'garden' method on it's own. Even the 'upstairs room facing 3's nearest mast' method (which incidently is very, very near*) isn't good enough on it's own.
*Thanks to OFCOM's Sitefinder (it's useful but rubbishly implemented!)
Currently trying to upload a quicktime video that's a tad under 50 meg to Vox. It's taking a while, and I'm in a HSDPA area (in the garden, with me dongle high up in the air and sitting within spitting distance of the network's nearest mast)!
The interesting thing is how much the upload speed affects the download speeds. I'm currently browsing whilst typing this (I like to multitask and have a wandering mind!) and it's at a complete and utter snail's pace! It's barely usable.
To be fair, most people, most of the time, don't want to send 50 megs out to the interweb via a mobile connection. I'm not most people though and I'm giving this mobile broadband a thorough going over!
<Here I'd put a picture if my connection was faster>
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