A while back, I had talked about the issues I had with my
EVDO express card purchase and my macbook pro, a lot of you asked me to sum up my experiences with the card, and to comment on whether the speeds are worthy of being a primary connection or not, so here’s my answer.

Definitely, maybe.

I know, such definitive answers make me sound like a politician don’t they? Well.. politicians would probably skirt the question completely..
Here are my experiences with the Sprint USB card since late June 2007.

EVDO/3G data cards and plans are the most liberating technology ever sold. Seriously.

I am no longer confined to the house. I am no longer confined to starbucks and other places with stable wifi (Panera) (usually).
I can work, or play anywhere (more on that later). This technology allows one to connect to the internet from anywhere, with connections much faster than some DSL connections I’ve seen. The advertised speeds of “average download speeds of 600 kbps - 1.4 Mbps and average upload speeds of 350 - 500 kbps.” are not false. If you happen to be in an EVDO Rev A area, you will be close to advertised speeds. I’ve downloaded software at about 300K/sec before, and I’ve uploaded photos to flickr at about 80-100K/sec.

Nothing earth shattering, but I was in a hotel in McAllen, TX where the wifi of the hotel was $9.99/day and only worked in the lobby.

If you know me personally, you know I work remotely. I “tele-commute”, if you know me well, you know I’m rarely at my house. It’s not because
I’m on location or “on site”, but because I have this sprint card, and I can work from anywhere. Example:

I was one of the crazies that stood/sat in line for the iPhone, I got in line at 7:30AM, but I took my laptop and power cord with me, while waiting for the phone to be ‘released’, I actually got about 6 hours of billable time in. Work was happy, as they didn’t lose me for a day, I was happy as I could bill, while I was in line.

.

Without the card, I would’ve had to call in sick, and I wouldn’t have been able to make money that day. So, enough of the “anecdotal ad” for the EVDO cards.

So, how does the card fare up to travel and regions? Well.. since I bought the card, here is a table of places I’ve been, and what a standard wifi connection would’ve cost me.

Since I use a MacBook Pro, my development environment goes with me. I have PHP 5, Python, Apache and MySQL all installed
and with test data on my laptop. I wrote my PHP Gallery script and uploaded it to my server in McAllen, TX. Yes, I’m a nerd.
This also helps from a non nerdy perspective, I’ve been able to look up things to do, movie times, and alternate routes via google maps, though with the iphone, I don’t need the laptop to do any of those tasks, except maps when I need to get birds eye view of the city I’m in.

I’ll be in NJ first week of November, Vegas in December, El Paso in January, I no longer have to worry about connectivity anymore, I can choose to be as connected as I want to be.

For those who think this is just encroaching more and more into my life, or their lives, the technology isn’t bad, it’s your lifestyle. I have no problem defining when and where I do not want to be contacted, and the people I work with respect the boundaries I set. The card doesn’t make you a slave to your job, it doesn’t force you to check and respond to emails, it’s you.

Also, the reason why I said definitely maybe earlier, is that this connection as fast as it is for work, is not ideal for gaming, and is no where near as fast as the fiber running to my home, downloading songs and shows off iTunes is not the fastest thing on these cards, I can download songs from iTunes in about 3 seconds, on the card, it takes me about 2 minutes.. not terribly slow, but 1:57 .. I could’ve heard an entire song in that time.. :).

A thing to note about Wifi hotspots, sometimes they do not allow you to establish PPTP VPN tunnels (Panera), so working from these places is impossible if you need to connect to the corporate VPN.