For over two years now I haven't had personal broadband Internet access. In April I got an XDA Mini S, which promoted me from horrifically basic WAP to painful GPRS access. It was a huge freedom being able to access the web over the weekend, but it is slow, expensive, and there is an appalling choice of browsers for Windows Mobile.
My insanity has been held at bay by being able to stay after work and catch up on things, but I've still not been able to play online games, download large files, listen to streaming music, and so on.
Soon most of this will be over, when I finally get broadband access, via high-speed 3G from Vodafone. It will still be relatively expensive and I still won't be able to download large files, but at least I can turn images back on, browse more than three pages at a time, and not have to wait for ages just for a simple page to load.
That in itself is perhaps not particularly blog-worthy — I'm not one of those people that needs to transcribe every little thing that happens to me — but what I think might be of interest to others is the process of getting my MacBook Pro online; unfortunately it isn't just a case of plugging in a datacard and firing up Firefox.
The first obstacle to overcome is ports — 3G datacards are made for the old-style PCMCIA CardBus slots, and modern laptops (including the MBP) don't have CardBus slots - they have the new-fangled PCMCIA ExpressCard/34 slot.
Not a problem - just get an adapter, right? Well, almost. You can't just get any adapter. Due to reasons which I couldn't be bothered to understand, different CardBus devices need different adapters. Fortunately there is an adapter for 3G broadband datacards. Just one. In the whole wide world, a single company makes a 32-bit CardBus to USB adapter which will work with any compatible datacards.
So, thank you Elan systems for producing the u132 and making it so at least there is an appropriate device on offer.
None of my usual online stores stock the u132, but Froogling for it brought up about a dozen results. Not great, but again better than nothing. The various reviews produced mixed results for most of them, but in the end I chose eXpansys, due to them having mostly positive reviews, support forums and contact details.
They didn't actually have the u132 in stock when I placed my order, but since it promised a delivery in three days time, I decided that should be fine. Along with next working day delivery, that's four days (six including the weekend), so when I placed my order on Wednesday I figured it should arrive Monday. Today. It hasn't.
On Friday I posted on their support forum, asking why the expected delivery had apparently become stuck on two days, and on Saturday I sent then an e-mail essentially repeating the question.
What I did receive today is an answer to the e-mail I sent. An e-mail that looks like it was written by an illiterate monkey, and that explains how the product is not in their central warehouse, it is in their US warehouse, and it'll be five days until the stock arrives.
I check my tracking page, and it has been updated to report five days. I check the product page and it still claims three days.
As you would expect, I am very pissed off with eXpansys for lying about their stock status, and the disgraceful quality of the customer service reply has drained even more of my confidence in them. Tomorrow I will be deciding whether to order from Microwarehouse - if I can get them to guarantee delivery before the end of this week - and cancel my eXpansys order.
Tuesday Update:
I received a reply to my Microwarehouse e-mail; they can get it to me in one day, just give them a call. So I did just that, the call took only three minutes, and I should have the adapter tomorrow.
Have sent of a reply to eXpansys asking them to cancel my order. I didn't receive a reply, but my tracking page now says cancelled, so hopefully I wont need to worry about getting in touch with my credit card company to block the payment.
Wednesday Update:
Well the adapter arrived today from Microwarehouse, as promised. It came at lunch time, but I didn't find out until 5:25 when I received an e-mail from my Microwarehouse contact, who I'd e-mailed 15 minutes earlier asking for an update, telling me that it had been delivered and signed for at lunctime. So I rushed out to reception and found a parcel sitting on the side, just the company name and address. I checked the delivery note and it was from Microwarehouse/Inmac, so I took it back to my desk and opened it, and sure enough the adapter was inside. It's a bit of an ugly thing, about the size of a scientific calculator but twice as thick. More later on in getting it working...
Of course, the adapter is only part of the story. I also need the actual datacard, and a contract with someone to make the datacard come alive. The first company to offer a high-speed 3G service was Vodafone, so one evening about 8pm I sent them an e-mail via their online webform, asking about compatibility with the adapter, checking what their 'fair use' limits for their 'unlimited' tariff was, and what happens if it is exceeded. I arrived at work the next day to find that, had I hung around for another ten-fifteen minutes, I would have received a very prompt and polite reply, letting me know that yes the adapter was compatible, and their limit is 1000MB and if it is exceeded the first step is an e-mail request to cut down. All good.
A second e-mail, sent a few days ago, to check whether the data tariff was only available online or also available in stores was not so prompt. They took a whole half-hour to reply, confirming that it was available from both.
Needless to say, I am very impressed with Vodafone's shining example of service, and I haven't even bothered looking at the offerings which a couple of the other companies are now providing. Hopefully Vodafone can maintain the high level of service once I become a customer - I haven't yet gone into my local store, as I'm waiting for the u132 to arrive, so I can hopefully get it all setup together.
Wednesday Update:
Lunchtime on Wednesday and I went into town to get the data card. When I first arrived all the staff were busy, so I popped along to Jessops to get some printer ink, and when I returned someone was free. Procedure was a little long-winded, but relatively simple, and didn't take too long. Also, they gave me the business prices, rather than the regular customer ones, saving me about seven pounds a month. Which is nice.
Details on the installation process are after the next paragraph.
One more thing to mention, is that the u132 currently only has Windows drivers. If I didn't have my MBP dual-booting between OSX and XP, I'd still be stuck. It'll be the fourth thing I am forced to use Windows for (the first three being playing Oblivion, testing webpages in IE, and using Paint Shop Pro) but hey - at least I can dual-boot in the first place.
Wednesday Update:
So, I get home from work with everything I need to get going. Install a few drivers, plug a few things in, and I'm up and running, right? Yeah, like it would be that simple! I booted my MacBook Pro into Windows XP, and following the Elan instruction guide, I installed the Vodafone software, then plugged in the adapter and installed the drivers for that, restarted, and then plugged in the datacard and... nothing. The adapter's status light blinked every so often, indicating that it was plugged in, but there was no solid green light to confirm the card was detected. So I took it out and pushed it in again, checked the USB cable was firmly in at each end, but it still didn't detect the card. I was beginning to get a bit worried - did I have a dud adapter? Maybe the card wasn't actually compatible? Perhaps the sim card wasn't activated?
After panicking slightly for a bit, I read the release notes and noticed a small difference - it said to copy the adapter drivers to the hard-drive before connecting it. So I went and did this with my main PC, the installed the Vodafone software, then connected the adapter and installed the drivers, then without restarting I plugged the card in, and bingo the solid green light came on, and I was able to complete the Vodafone setup routine and connect to the wonderfully fast GPRS network!
Hum. Well, it was working at least, and I was getting late for my photography club, so I hoped it was just a signal issue and I went out.
Upon arriving back, I booted up the machine, moved the card about, and the status light changed to blue, indicated 3G/HSDPA. Only one fifth signal strength, but it's a start!
Tomorrow I will uninstall everything from my MBP and try setting it up on there again, but for now I'm starting to get tired, so I will wish anyone reading this goodnight.
Further Updates: All further updates are in the comments section, below.
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