Slashdot Mirror
3G Notebook In Review
An anonymous reader writes "Just found this review of a notebook with integrated 3G. It looks like you just slide a 3G sim into the machine and you get 3g data connectivity, it even drops down to edge or gprs if there's no 3g. The rest of the spec looks pretty awesome too with a 2.16ghz core duo chip and 2gb of ram. I want one of these! " Given my recent woes of getting my Nokia 6682 to actually work as a UTMS/EDGE modem for my Powerbook, the notion of integration is a really nice sounding idea.
March 2006 -- http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news.php?newsId=2939
Part of your woes may be that the Nokia 6682 doesn't support UMTS.
You want the Nokia 6680 for that. It's the same phone with one of the GSM bands dropped for UMTS and a VGA phone in the front for video phone calls.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I have been using a Sierra Wireless Aircard for a while though Telus Mobility (Canadian) and its been working out pretty well for me. The card itself is completely free if you sign up for a three year contract and if you choose the appropriate data rate montly fees are pretty reasonable.
Speed in major cities such as Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary make use of their 1X EDO protocol which is about the speed of a slow ADSL connection. In order places you get simple 1X with vaying speeds but I can average 13Kbs in transfer rates for large files.
The problem with these things however is the cost of the connection itself. I've been moving from place to place for a while now so getting an Cable/DSL connection for a month or two at a time is just not worth it.
However with Telus, most of their plans charge by the meg and that does not take very long to break if your using even just straight IMAP mail. So your generally stuck with their 'unlimited' service which is about 100$ a month (50$/month for the first three months).
For me its worth it, even though Halifax is still on plain 1X. But its certainly not for everyone!
Many phone companies will give you 2 sim cards on the same number, e.g. for use in your car. They are also pretty easy to copy. Better still would have been Bluetooth: did you know there is a bluetooth profile for "borrowing" a SIM card? Keep the Laptop (or whatever) anywhere near your phone and it can act as if it had the SIM card inside....
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
*shrug* I pay $19.99 for unlimited data transfer... seems like a bargain to me.
I did have to learn the hard way though that the US and Europe's UMTS frequencies are different. Which really kind of upset me since the Sony Ericsson V802SE is an overseas phone so of course it operates on 2100mhz. The band issue is because 2100mhz isn't available in all areas, so they had to go with 1900mhz. Go FCC!
Anyway, be careful when shopping for a UMTS phone as most of them will be for 2100mhz. To my knowledge, at the current moment there are only 2 1900mhz UMTS phones out which are the branded ones at Cingular. I just got the LG U340, works pretty well as a phone and fantastic as a modem. With my MacBook using bluetooth to connect to the Internet through UMTS, I get speeds of 35-40KBps and it bursts up to 45-48KBps. Not too bad for coming from GPRS which tops out for me at about 6KBps.
There are dual band UMTS phones planned... one of them is the Nokia N80. Looks like a sweet phone but me needing instant gratification, just went with what was available. So if you want a true "world phone", you'll have to wait for one of those.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
Everyone who is complaining about price for a data connection in the US needs to look at Sprint. The plan I'm using has an additional $15/month fee for a data connection for my phone. Thats a flat rate for unlimited data usage. I have a Pocket PC 6700 so i use the data connection through the phone all the time. When I need to get some work done i use bluetooth to my laptop and it works great. The PPC has 802.11 in it, but I rarely ever use it because of the speed, ease of use, and lack of limits on use of the data connection. The one thing i wish i could do would be setup the 802.11 as a passthrough to the EVDO network...to do that I have to connect my laptop directly and use it as the gateway for the lan; when i'm connecting this way, i use the USB connection, that way the phone battery is charging instead of draining. The one drawback to this setup is the phone was $400 upfront, but thats just cuz i wanted the phone/PDA combo, which i'm quite happy with. I don't know if sprint offers this service with other phones, but i think they do.
*disclaimier: sprints price on the phone is $450, but verizon has the same phone for $400. Verizons model won't allow for a laptop data connection though, so don't go with them, just tell sprint you'll get their service instead of verizons if they match the price on the phone.