Comment my commute with PCS vision (Score 3, Informative) 188
After reading about the unlimited PCS vision for only $10 over my regular plan I decided to try it. I typically spend 3-4 hours a day commuting to my job, to help that time pass faster I have already developed various techniques for getting work down such as preloading various websites, email, and code that I'm working on. Although some of the tools I develop can be run on my laptop running windows, others cannot and I hoped to be able to expand the range of stuff I can work on in transit.
I ordered a new phone, the sanyo 4900, that supported all the typical in-phone features such as email, messaging, and web browsing. It also has a USB for connecting a laptop etc. Since I already had an existing sprint pcs service most of the rebates weren't available, so I ended up paying full price for the new phone.
When I first got the phone I tried out some of the in-phone "3G" features, such as the built in browser, but found it very slow and clumsy. I typically would wait 30-60 seconds every time I tried loading a new page. Trying to type a url in using the keypad is extremely painful, and it seems many webpages just won't render in any usable way on such a tiny screen. I already have two email addresses, so I haven't made any real effort to use the sprint email.
The main way I now use the vision service is by connecting via USB to my laptop. This gives me a real web browser, and makes it possible to connect to my work via VPN.
Like the article says the latency is very high. Typically in the range of 500mS. Also the jitter (the variability in the latency) is very high as well, I often get latencies that vary from 200mS up to 1.2 S! This latency is most noticable if you try to use a terminal connection to login to a remote machine. Trying to type anything with a latency that high is downright painful. I have learned to keep an buffer in my head of what I have typed because I typically won't see it echoed back for 2-3 seconds after I type. For web browsing the latency is noticable, but usable.
Obviously writing code with such high latency is painful, fortunately there is another way. Trying to run a filesystem such as NFS is not really doable under these conditions, but ftp works fine. I typically work by loading source via ftp, editing, saving it back, and then using a (extremely slow) terminal to compile and execute with output redirected to a log file. I then load the log file (again with ftp) debug, edit code and repeat. Fortunately vim has built in ftp support so I can just load a file by saying ftp://hostname/dirpath/filename and then from then on it gets treated as a regular file.
I ordered a new phone, the sanyo 4900, that supported all the typical in-phone features such as email, messaging, and web browsing. It also has a USB for connecting a laptop etc. Since I already had an existing sprint pcs service most of the rebates weren't available, so I ended up paying full price for the new phone.
When I first got the phone I tried out some of the in-phone "3G" features, such as the built in browser, but found it very slow and clumsy. I typically would wait 30-60 seconds every time I tried loading a new page. Trying to type a url in using the keypad is extremely painful, and it seems many webpages just won't render in any usable way on such a tiny screen. I already have two email addresses, so I haven't made any real effort to use the sprint email.
The main way I now use the vision service is by connecting via USB to my laptop. This gives me a real web browser, and makes it possible to connect to my work via VPN.
Like the article says the latency is very high. Typically in the range of 500mS. Also the jitter (the variability in the latency) is very high as well, I often get latencies that vary from 200mS up to 1.2 S! This latency is most noticable if you try to use a terminal connection to login to a remote machine. Trying to type anything with a latency that high is downright painful. I have learned to keep an buffer in my head of what I have typed because I typically won't see it echoed back for 2-3 seconds after I type. For web browsing the latency is noticable, but usable.
Obviously writing code with such high latency is painful, fortunately there is another way. Trying to run a filesystem such as NFS is not really doable under these conditions, but ftp works fine. I typically work by loading source via ftp, editing, saving it back, and then using a (extremely slow) terminal to compile and execute with output redirected to a log file. I then load the log file (again with ftp) debug, edit code and repeat. Fortunately vim has built in ftp support so I can just load a file by saying ftp://hostname/dirpath/filename and then from then on it gets treated as a regular file.
