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Dell Strikes Deal For High-Speed Wireless 37
Jason Jardine wrote to mention a C|Net article describing a new Dell deal with Vodafone to provide high-speed wireless access. From the article: "Dell said Tuesday that it plans to embed Vodafone's High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technology into laptops built to order and sold in Europe. The technology will be backwards compatible with earlier 3G, or third-generation, wireless technologies including UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), the company said."
Woohoo (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the shitty features of the US market that the UK cellphone market has been picking up recently is longer contracts (now up to 18 months) and higher and higher fees to unlock your device at the end of the term. Orange are up from £free to £20.
And now they want us to pay this on a laptop as well? Sure, fine, throw in a 3G/GPRS data card if you want - but FFS don't cripple it by making it work only with one service. No one would accept a wireless card that only worked with T-Mobil hotspots after all.
Re:Woohoo (Score:2)
Re:Woohoo (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Woohoo (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know how well the 18 month contracts are selling. No one I knows has signed any of these deals. They all think - hang on, my phone will be obsolete in 12 months, even if it still works. As for unlocking, that nice man in the market does it for £ 6 anyway. And if he tries to charge more, there's another in the next street. Round here, even the meat stall in the market offers phone unlocking. I did my own with a file downloaded from the internet.
Personally, I would like to see the whole business of locking challenged in the European court as an illegal restraint of trade.
Re:Woohoo (Score:2)
Even though the handset I got (Nokia N70) will be obselete shortly when the N80 comes out, it's a good deal and I'll probably end up purchasing the latest and greatest Nokia smartphone after 10-12 months SIM free anyway, and giving my existing N70 to my dad as a Christmas present
Re:Woohoo (Score:1)
I am already subscribed to to Cingular's HSDPA service. If I can buy a new Dell/Lenovo laptop, my expectation is that I will be able to pop the SIM card out from my Sierra Wireless AirCard 860. Pop the SIM card into the laptop, and get online without the PC card.
Wifi access using laptop integrated antenna, in my personal experience, have better reception than PC card using same WiFi chipset. The reason is not a mystery, either. The intergrated antennas usua
Great (Score:2)
SIM Cards. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:SIM Cards. (Score:2)
In the US? (Score:1)
Re:In the US? (Score:3, Interesting)
Most likely you don't know what you're talking about. A SIM card is a cryptographic token and storage for GSM phone calls. It goes into a GSM phone device. And to complete the acronym soup, GPRS is a packet radio service on top of GSM.
They could give you a SIM card, but it wouldn't do you any good unless you also had another device to plug the SIM card into.
Re:In the US? (Score:1)
Re:In the US? (Score:2, Informative)
"In fall last year, Dell announced it would embed 3G access technology from Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless in its products."
As an existing Cingular Broadband Access(HSDPA) subscriber, I am looking forward to get a new laptop with build in HSDPA capabilities.
I am mostly satisified with the signal reception I currently have with the SierraWireless Aircard 860.
However, the signals can be marginal in many areas.
Just as I observed significant improvement when W
Re:In the US? (Score:1)
In my opinion, just because they use devices made by American companies, doesn't mean they are using them in America, since the Article specifically states that Dell has these deals in other countries.
Re:In the US? (Score:2)
I miss Steven (Score:4, Funny)
Dude! You're gettin' 15 year contract with a 5-figure penalty for early termination!
Re:I miss Steven (Score:2)
Steven: No way dude, I got busted for weed that I bought online and now they say I can't even use the internet.
It's like - totally harsh!
Interesting "solution" to a non-existant problem (Score:3, Interesting)
This deal might bring mobile broadband to the masses, but with the mobile phones available these days - and the fact that most new laptops include bluetooth as standard, is it really necessary?
I have a Nokia N70 [nokia.co.uk] handset which uses 3G technology and provides me with connection speeds of around 400Kbps in 3G-enabled areas - 115Kbps in GPRS (2.5G) areas - and even though it's a separate device, I can simply hook it up to my laptop using bluetooth (or USB if I'm using a machine without bluetooth built in) and connect to the Internet anywhere. However, the flexibility of having a small handset allows me to sit in bed, on the couch, on public transport - ie, anywhere a laptop can be somewhat inconvenient - and check my email, logon to IRC, access web-pages and catch up on the latest news.
Even most non-smartphone devices these days are bluetooth enabled and allow this sort of wireless hookup to laptops and allow for the flexibility I mentioned earlier.
Re:Interesting "solution" to a non-existant proble (Score:5, Funny)
dude, you need a girlfriend real bad!
Re:Interesting "solution" to a non-existant proble (Score:1)
Interesting... (Score:1)
NO contracts in INDIA (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:NO contracts in INDIA (Score:1)
Re:NO contracts in INDIA (Score:1)
In New Zealand, cellphones numbers start with 027, 021, 025 or 029. The person knows that they're calling a cellphone, and to what network they're calling.
In America it seems that cellphone numbers are indistinguishable from regular phone numbers, they have an prefix which is the same as the area code the phone was sold in.
It costs more for a phone company to connect a cellph
Bucks for bandwidth (Score:2)
Orange were nice enough to offer me a try 3G for 3 months free when I took out my contract, so I've been a pretty heavy user over that period. Being able to freely check my emails, read slashdot and ssh into my various boxes has been a delight. On average I used 50-75MB a month, which I though was a reasonable, if not execesive amount, I mean my cable connection gets taken for 1GB a day.
They want around £1 a MB. As useful as that service was,
Re:Bucks for bandwidth (Score:1)
I'm pretty sure most 'home' connections from any of the big UK providers would want to be having strong words with you if you were using a gig a day on legitimate purposes; either that or you have one MONSTER of a pr0n archive...
Can I assume this is a corporate connection
3G and wi-fi can't swap roles! (Score:1)