I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
Follow @roddrury
I’ve been using my T3G Minimax green match box for a few weeks now and it is great. I’ve probably done 30+ live demo’s and I trust it to be reliable. We still have a few of the Vodems but are subbing them out as we get new staff.
Telecom is upgrading to their 3G service today in the Auckland CBD. The upgrade is called EVDO Rev A and real speeds are reported as 2.9MB down and 1.2MB up. (compared to 1.7/.150 with the existing EVDO). What that means is that sending large emails with attachments will be much faster. The key aspect for real work use is latency. This has halved. RevA will be in Wellington CBD by April and national by the end of 2007. USB and Smart express cards are due February/ March.
While it would be great to have wifi everywhere - the cellular based system is becoming good enough that you can have access anywhere. We spend around $50 a month for each connection. With hotels being dumb and charging $20 a day for wifi a data card makes a lot of sense.
For email and web demo’s mobile data is good enough now. If you haven’t yet committed to mobile data I strongly recommend it. It allows you to keep on top of things while on the road. Less downtime during the day is more time with the kids at night.
blog
My RevA datacard arrives next week. After just having got an ,magnetic mount aerial for my T3G (EVDO) card plus a Yagi (from http://www.cellutronics.co.nz/) for the bach, I find out that the RevA card calls for a different connector. Ahhh! You’ll need an external aerial for the RevA (no pop up one) but they can sell you a desktop one with the card. And apparently connection adaptors will be available soon.
MG