Daley Ponderings

I finally decided to buy a wireless card for my laptop that uses the cell phone network, as opposed to plain wi-fi.  This will allow me to have more/better access when I am not in range of a wifi access point (say, hypothetically, if one were to travel to Middleburg, Virginia to a house that only has dial-up access), and it will probably be useful in other places too.

My original plan was to use a different network than AT&T, so if my cell phone didn't work, maybe that laptop would, and vice-versa.  But, after spending hours on hold and in the Verizon store, only to be told that I would have to drive home and back again with my social security card in order to sign up for service, I decided to stick with AT&T, and had the device in somewhere around 10 minutes.  As I was driving home from the AT&T store, I realized what the problem is.  For my DSL and home phone connection, I expect poor service from Verizon, since I am paying them less than $40/month for both services.  But, for this wireless service, it is going to cost $65/month or so, and the device itself cost about $130 or something, so I expected that I would get better service.

Watching everyone in the Verizon store waiting for 30 minutes just to get to talk to someone made me wonder why anyone puts up with it.  I am typing this post using the dongle (no install disk needed - a pseudo mass-storage device built into it, pretty nifty) though I am inside my house, so not exactly needed.  But, at least with the 3G network, I can't tell any difference from my DSL connection - although it just occurred to me that according to the maximum "burst" rates, it would actually be faster than my DSL connection, so maybe I'll use it even when in the house.  I'll have to see how the speed compares, and how often it is using the "burst" rates, as opposed to the regular rates.

Doing a speakeasy speed test, I am currently getting a 783kbps download, and 281kbps upload.  Our DSL is 768/128kbps.