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« July 13 Confab | Main | Storm 86, Liberty 66 » July 14, 2006Cingular Wireless InternetBack in May, when I blogged about my experience with the Cingular 8125, one of the things I mentioned as a desired feature of the phone was "Internet access for my laptop." Specifically, I said: It's no great secret that I spend a lot of time away from my apartment (out the door early, home late, and traveling), and if my non-work e-mail, calendar, contacts, to-do lists and other data are sitting on my PowerBook at home, well, they're not doing me much good. Historically, my "solution" to this personal-data-access-issue has been to try using Web-based services; more recently, I've acquired a cellular data card that I pop into into my PowerBook, and I schelp the whole shootin' works around with me. This works, but is far from ideal - it's an extra 5 or 6 pounds on my person. So if a small-n-light doodad like a phone could run my calendar and handle my e-mail ... well, that'd be excellent. I've since given up on the dream of having a small-n-light device that can run my personal life. My personal (crummy) experience with the 8125, coupled with watching Jeff attempt (and fail) to make a smartphone work for him, has convinced me that the best solution for now is to just keep carting my Mac around. I know a lot of people who have much the same problem. And, frankly, carting your machine around isn't a bad solution ... as long as you can get consistent Internet access. This is a bigger problem than you might think. WiFi is fairly available, of course, both from the free sources (coffee shops, your nice neighbor, or "Mr. Linksys/Belkin 54G") and the paid ones (such as T-Mobile or the generic pay-for airport WiFi). But getting reliable, high-speed wireless Internet access outside of the coffee shop/airport location can be a challenge. And let's be honest: without Internet, your computer is, well, a 5- or 6-pound brick in your bag. Recently, my solution has been to use Cingular's high-speed cellular Internet service. Both Cingular and Verizon have invested in high-speed data networks (using GPRS and EDGE, respectively), and, as a laptop user, you can purchase a special PC card that will get you access to them. I've had a number of people (coworkers, mostly) ask me about the service, and I thought I'd take a moment to lay out what's good (and bad) about it. (Oh, hey -- props: This is yet another example of the Richard Huff Technology Hand-Me-Down Program™: Richard bought the Cingular gear (and service) before his last trip to Italy, and it was all gathering dust in the closet after he got back. So when I wanted to take it for a spin, well ... he loaned it to me.) Overall, the Cingular solution isn't too bad. The hardware is a Sierra Wireless AirCard 860 - with a cute little orange antenna - that slides into the PC card slot on my PowerBook. You need some custom driver software (Mobile High Speed For Mac OS X) from the NovaMind folks in Germany, but other than that - simple. Pop in the card, tell the thing to dial, and - boom. Online. Dang-fast Internet pretty much wherever you happen to be. The service and hardware a bit spendy. The card is about $200 (and activation's another $36); the NovaMind software is about $100, and monthly service is $60. What's it like? Well, performance isn't terrible. That doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, and it's not. Like cable or DSL, the connection is asymmetric - I get consistent download speeds of 70K - 80K per second, but uploads at 10K - 13K. The problem is latency - the network is incredibly, unbelievably, phenomenally latent. What this means, in practical terms, is that downloading a single large file over the network works well, while checking your e-mail using IMAP can take for ... ev ... er. Another challenge with the system is that the Sierra Wireless card does some pretty wicked compression to get its fast download speeds. This compression is handled by the PowerBook's CPU, which means that the computer feels sluggish while browsing the Internet. Finally, because the system relies on a PC card, it means your laptop needs to have an available PC card slot in order to get online. This isn't a problem if you're using an old-school PowerBook G4, as I am, but if you want a newer MacBook (or, God forbid, a MacBook Pro), then you're out of luck - the Pros use the newer, non-backward-compatible ExpressCard, while the MacBooks have no card slot at all. But if you have an older machine - and a need to be online everywhere - this isn't a terrible deal. I've succeeded at using my Motorola v551 phone as a Bluetooth modem on the Cingular network, but the speeds were unacceptably slow - only 6K or 7K per second. So the Sierra card gives a 10x speed boost over a generic cell phone. But it's no WiFi - and for $60 a month, I feel like it should be a lot, lot better. So I'm off to explore some other alternatives for access. With luck, I'll dig up some little gem that can replace the functionality (if not the blazing download performance) of the Sierra ... without breaking the bank. Posted by Gavin Shearer at July 14, 2006 4:38 PM. Posted to Geek. CommentsWell now you should know that you can get unlimited internet on that for 20$ a month. Anyways a phone is a perfect modem and will work just as well as your card does( if it has the right equipment). Just make sure that you buy a phone with 3G or Edge. You can access the Edge network just about anywhere where theres a signal with down speeds around 112k all for the 20$ bucks a month and plus hey you have a phone too but u still half to pay for that too. Posted by: Slvr L7 Post a commentThanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. 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at May 1, 2007 3:24 PM