Verizon Wireless High Speed / Broadband
Simple: Get it!
There are three major faults to my Verizon High Speed Wireless service:
The rest is great news!
I've gotten caught back up on my e-mail and done several other projects that were impossible to find the time to do.
With my little bitty Sony VAIO (PCG-TR3A) and Verizon, I have what someone described by saying:
"It looks like you laptop and balckberry got together and had a child."
For a flat rate you get unlimited data. Some of their materials muddy the water a bit on this subject. Apparently they were'nt sure if the service would have umlimited data usage or not. It is unlimited even though the documentation and agreements will sometimes refer to overage charges, etc.
The performance of this connection is often better than what I would expect from a DSL line. It is still slower than my Cable Line, but hey, isn't it great to even be in a class where it can be compared to cable.
When out of range for the high speed service, it automatically kicks back to a speed that is comparable or a little faster than a modem connection.
Coverage is great! San Antonio is designated on their map as not having coverage. On the contrary, it had great coverage and the connection was smokin'.
I went out to the country a few hours north of Houston where my father-in-law has some property. I was in a location where he normally can't get a signal on his cell phone. Even there I was able to get a (fragile) connection to the Internet.
This is not you father's CDPD.
A few days ago I drove halfway across Dallas on highway 635, notorious for it's traffic. It was closer to a parking lot than a freeway. I was consistently stopped for extended periods of time.
I was uploading some picutres (several at about 800k each) to my website (www.wanderinphotos.com), listening to two internet radio feeds (adjusting the volume back and forth) and receiving e-mail! I never lost my connection!
The next day, I went to take pictures of my best-man's first-son's baptism. Before I was home, the pictures were on the Internet for him and his family to share.
On this list of gadgets, it a keeper!
Back to the cons:
When you install the software, reboot after evey step. The instructions that came with the hardware don't even make sense. Don't try to follow them. When I first had problem and took it back to the salesguy, he told me that he hadn't seen one yet that didn't have problems the first time.
Next he said "We'll re-do it and make sure we follow the instructions closely."
He was embarressed to find that that wasn't possible and quickly started looking for a phone number to get help.
Install the drivers first. Then reboot after each major step completes. If things go wrong, go to the system applet int he control panel, sue the harware tab to remove the driver for the card and start over fromt here.
On my second laptop I managed a complete installation without problems becasue I followed my own advice from above.
I'm not sure what can be done about the sleeping problem. I have just gotten in the habit of shutting down the connection manager before I put my laptop to sleep.
On the plus side, the connection manager can be set to manage you WiFi connections as well. It will even know to drop the cellular connection for a local (faster) WiFi connection. When I get home, it asks me if I want to drop the connection in favor of my home network.
An even greater bonus is this: The connection manager stabilizes my WiFi connection. Apparently, some Centrino WiFi chipsets have problems keeping a connection under Windows XP. I have one of those chipsets. Since I installed the software, my home WiFi connection has stabilized.
Happy surfing...
Christian Farmer
keywords: Verizon, Broadband, Wireless Internet, Wireless Boradband, VZAccess, PC5220, National Access
There are three major faults to my Verizon High Speed Wireless service:
- It took too long to get here.
- There were complications with installation of the hardware.
- The program that manages the wireless connection does not like to go to sleep. (Or, maybe it's the PCMCIA card's drivers, who knows.)
The rest is great news!
I've gotten caught back up on my e-mail and done several other projects that were impossible to find the time to do.
With my little bitty Sony VAIO (PCG-TR3A) and Verizon, I have what someone described by saying:
"It looks like you laptop and balckberry got together and had a child."
For a flat rate you get unlimited data. Some of their materials muddy the water a bit on this subject. Apparently they were'nt sure if the service would have umlimited data usage or not. It is unlimited even though the documentation and agreements will sometimes refer to overage charges, etc.
The performance of this connection is often better than what I would expect from a DSL line. It is still slower than my Cable Line, but hey, isn't it great to even be in a class where it can be compared to cable.
When out of range for the high speed service, it automatically kicks back to a speed that is comparable or a little faster than a modem connection.
Coverage is great! San Antonio is designated on their map as not having coverage. On the contrary, it had great coverage and the connection was smokin'.
I went out to the country a few hours north of Houston where my father-in-law has some property. I was in a location where he normally can't get a signal on his cell phone. Even there I was able to get a (fragile) connection to the Internet.
This is not you father's CDPD.
A few days ago I drove halfway across Dallas on highway 635, notorious for it's traffic. It was closer to a parking lot than a freeway. I was consistently stopped for extended periods of time.
I was uploading some picutres (several at about 800k each) to my website (www.wanderinphotos.com), listening to two internet radio feeds (adjusting the volume back and forth) and receiving e-mail! I never lost my connection!
The next day, I went to take pictures of my best-man's first-son's baptism. Before I was home, the pictures were on the Internet for him and his family to share.
On this list of gadgets, it a keeper!
Back to the cons:
When you install the software, reboot after evey step. The instructions that came with the hardware don't even make sense. Don't try to follow them. When I first had problem and took it back to the salesguy, he told me that he hadn't seen one yet that didn't have problems the first time.
Next he said "We'll re-do it and make sure we follow the instructions closely."
He was embarressed to find that that wasn't possible and quickly started looking for a phone number to get help.
Install the drivers first. Then reboot after each major step completes. If things go wrong, go to the system applet int he control panel, sue the harware tab to remove the driver for the card and start over fromt here.
On my second laptop I managed a complete installation without problems becasue I followed my own advice from above.
I'm not sure what can be done about the sleeping problem. I have just gotten in the habit of shutting down the connection manager before I put my laptop to sleep.
On the plus side, the connection manager can be set to manage you WiFi connections as well. It will even know to drop the cellular connection for a local (faster) WiFi connection. When I get home, it asks me if I want to drop the connection in favor of my home network.
An even greater bonus is this: The connection manager stabilizes my WiFi connection. Apparently, some Centrino WiFi chipsets have problems keeping a connection under Windows XP. I have one of those chipsets. Since I installed the software, my home WiFi connection has stabilized.
Happy surfing...
Christian Farmer
keywords: Verizon, Broadband, Wireless Internet, Wireless Boradband, VZAccess, PC5220, National Access
posted by Christian Farmer at 6:15 PM
1 Comments:
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