Need a netbook/tablet pc and wifi access....help!

[BigNick]

The question I would have is if you are going to use it outside the U.S. where phone service (using a phone based product) would be very expensive to use. Just a consideration.

In many countries, a 3G data service "dongle" with SIM can be had for a few dollars with prepaid call charges. Doesn't have to be expensive. Do *not* use international roaming for data. (The only reason to use roaming for voice is to keep your number, and even that's not always worth the price - for data it's irrelevant.)

 

[donheff]

well, we talked and made a decision already! we ended up getting a HP Mini 311 Netbook from Verizon for $100 with a 2 yr contract on the mobile broadband service...250mb/mo for $39.

That's pretty good. Verizon charged $60 for that a year or so ago. I have the Mini 311 also. I don't need to tether it frequently so I just turn the tethering feature on on my smart phone. It is $25/mth (in addition to the phone data plan costs) but they prorate it by the day if you turn it back off. So I just pay a couple of bucks for a weekend at my get away house. i
I am on it now - works well.

 

[ERD50]

REWahoo said: I'm getting between 1.2 and 1.5 Mbps downloads on my aircard

I'd die. I just checked using the CNET bandwidth check. Apparently I'm getting well over 3.5 Mbps with my cable modem connection, and it seems as slow as molasses sometimes.

A couple possibilities:

1) Are you getting the 3.5Mbps rate when you are experiencing molasses speed? Cable has a lot of shared bandwidth in the system, and if there is a lot of demand at once, it can choke the actual BW to your connection by quite a bit.

2) Molasses speeds may not related to your connection at all. It could be the source, ad servers, your computer/browser, or a slow link anywhere in the chain.

For example, when I right click for page info on the ER portal page, it shows it has about 12.5KB of content, so ~ 125Kbits. So even if that 1.2Mbps aircard throughput was choked down to just 1/10th its normal speed it would deliver that page in about 1 second. 10/100ths of a second at the rated 1.25Mbps, versus 3.6/100ths at our rated 3.5Mbps.

I doubt you could detect a difference of about 7/100ths of a second. Even with pages with 10x the size, it's a fraction of a second delta. Not what I'd call 'molasses' (even at NOLA temperatures). I'd look elsewhere - DNS servers can really affect real-life performance, you can test and find a better one for your area sometimes.

PS: I haven't checked my DL speed in a while, but I generally see 1-1.5Mbps when doing large file downloads. But when I do a shift-R to refresh the portal, it takes about 2 seconds to fully load (with ad-blocker on - sorry but some of those ads were just too invasive). So clearly there is more to the apparent speed than just the connection speed.

-ERD50

 

[W2R]

Don't worry, ERD50, I've got it covered. Sometimes my bandwidth needs are higher than other times. Nothing very complex to analyze here, and not an earth-shaking problem - - simply an informal comment to a former speed-of-light spambuster, made half in jest. See what happens when one uses the wrong emoticon?

 

[ERD50]

Don't worry, ERD50, I've got it covered. Sometimes my bandwidth needs are higher than other times. Nothing very complex to analyze here, and not an earth-shaking problem - - simply an informal comment to a former speed-of-light spambuster, made half in jest. See what happens when one uses the wrong emoticon?

No problem, but emoticon or not, I don't see any other way to interpret what you posted other than you thought that 3.5Mbps versus 1.2Mbps would be a large perceivable difference for everyday browsing. So I responded.

And I mentioned it because a lot of people are under that assumption (even if you weren't). My SIL was 'bragging' one day that Comcast had doubled the speed in their neighborhood. When I asked her if her web pages were coming up any faster, she kinda scrunched up her face and said... " Hmmmm, no....?".

Of course, big file downloads can be faster in rough proportion to that speed, and that's nice. It depends how much of that one does. For me, when I DL large files, if I have to wait 10 minutes or 30 minutes, it's the same - I go do something else.

-ERD50