CrunchGear

Seriously, Why would I pay an arm and a leg for “mobile-broadband” when I can hop on any Wifi network, most of the time for free. WiFi is faster and cheaper. Plus Sprint and others keep introducing these networks in major cities( i guess because more people means more potential customers), while the real market would be in more suburban setting where WiFi signals can’t extend as far

Generally suburban and rural areas will get better wifi signals since there is less interference available, but at the same time there are less people to leech off of. Personally I think these Mobile broadband devices are great and as the networks improve so will the speeds. This is MUCH better than what we had to deal with 5-6 years ago when the only mobile access anyone had was through tethered cell phones getting up to14.4kb speeds or a over priced ricochet modem that only worked in a handful of cities and would get 56k. I’m guessing as more people get savy to securing their 802.11 networks the ability to get free wifi will drop greatly.
I do think that these devices will go away in a few years and most people will tether their EVDO ready cellphone to their laptops via bluetooth.

I think that these devices will start coming standard inside laptops designed for business. As much as I don’t like Sony they’ve started to do that already. Problem is that these devices are not universal and are usually specific to the vendor. Competition is based on price and speed offered by the provider and not necessarily the device itself. Very cool that it supports OS X. I know a few people who have been waiting for that.

My Thinkpad T60p has Verizon built in, so I went with Verizon. It’s pretty fast as I’ve posted on another comment. Mostly 600-800kbps, perfect for email/exchange and web surfing. But it keeps dumbing down intermittently to 1xrTT (dialup)

We also went with verizon because they were at the time the only ones with support on the new macbooks since they all have expresscards.

This would have persuaded me possibly to go with sprint for the evdo-a for those that of us who would have gotten the pcmcia cards, and we would have gotten 1 usb for the mac users.

I got a ton of useful information at http://www.evdoforums.com the forums their are pretty active, and their are a few hacks for better performance.

The bigger thing was pricing. Sprint is doing a promo at $60/month even if you don’t have sprint cell service. Verizon is $80 if you don’t. Luckily we were able to get 5 cards at a then corporate rate of $59. I think we are getting another 6% off of that for a business account. So it’ll be $53 or so, not bad, although it’s a 2 year contract… ugh

I wish it was faster though!

I think mobile broadband is great for anyone that travels alot or works out of the office. There will always be free wifi around that people can leech off of, but it’s nice just to be able login anytime to a secure network. Your not paying an “arm and a leg” for wireless anywhere internet, you are paying about the same for home broadband that you can use anywhere. The U720 just makes it easier for all types of computers have high-speed internet anywhere. You can get a Free U720 at http://moremobileinternet.com/free-u720

The u720 is reported to have over 1Mbps performance by several users on evdoforums.com

Of course if you have a very weak signal, you’ll get poorer performance.

the peeps at http://www.evdoinfo.com discovered how to make it work on osx first, and lots of people are seeing way faster results.
http://www.evdoforums.com/thread3422.html

Thanks for the link, Blake. Worth noting is that those download/upload speeds were in a non-Rev.A area - we’ll have information on the full capabilities of the U720 very soon.

I would love to have one but the sprint stores in my area dont have them yet. And I can see a evdo tower out my window as i type..but i just LOVE my dial-up which cost me 63$ a month(earthlink+phoneline).I know just a little longer. So please everybody feel sorry for me out here in the woods.

Sprint EVDO is incredible and I would be happy to help those of you “In the Woods.”

Please let me know what questions you may have about the service as I am a user and know where you can get the best deals!

Joshua.X.Imhoff@sprint.com