EVDO Cards Rock!

September 21, 2005 on 12:39 pm | In Hardware, Musings, Tech News by Josh Jones | 9 Comments

WTF PCMCIA EVDO LOL!

EVDO laptops do not.

Yesterday Verizon announced that Lenovo (aka IBM Thinkpads), HP, and I believe it was Dell, are going to make laptops with built-in connectivity to Verizon’s EVDO 3G network (1.5Mbs wherever there’s cell phone coverage in major cities)! Sony also has a laptop out right now with Cingular’s EDGE network built-in… which is way slower than EVDO! What were they thinking?

This is awesome news, because as you may know, I LOVE EVDO!

Except, no wait, this is stupid news. Well, the news itself isn’t stupid, just the laptop manufacturers are.

Don’t they know there’s already tons of EVDO PCMCIA cards that work just fine? I guess they don’t.

Well, probably they do. But right now they’re thinking:

“People used to need WI-FI cards and now it’s just built-in! Same thing’s going to happen with EVDO!”

Well, they’re partly right. The same thing will most likely happen with EVDO.. but this is not the same thing!

When you buy a laptop with built-in 802.11g, does it only work at Starbucks on the T-Mobile hot spots? When you get a laptop with a built-in modem, does it only dial AOL? When you get a laptop with an integrated DVD drive, does it only play Disney movies?

If your answer is “yes”, my condolences. You sir, are a sucker!

As much as T-Mobile, AOL, and Disney would love for that to be the case, the world just doesn’t work like that. When people buy a piece of hardware, they expect to be able to use it how they’d like, without a lot of weird exclusive tie-ins to some kind of provider.

So although a laptop with a built-in EVDO modem would be cool, a laptop with a built-in Verizon-only EVDO modem is not.

But people get cell phones that only work with one provider!

That is true.. and hopefully these laptops will be FREE with a 2-year contract! If so, I take it back, this is awesome news!

But, if it somehow turns out this is not the case, let me enumerate the pros and cons of getting one of these new EVDO-enabled laptops vs. a plain-old EVDO PCMCIA card like the one I’m touching right now. (There, I just touched it for real.)

EVDO LAPTOP PROS:

* I assume there will be better integration with the laptop. I.E., no ghastly EVDO card sticking out the side, no software to install, perhaps better power management. You don’t use up your PCMCIA slot too.. but really, what uses those anymore besides EVDO cards?

EVDO PCMCIA CARD PROS:

* They can work on all laptops (including OS X and Linux), not just a few Windows machines made by three manufacturers.

* Later, if you decide to switch to Sprint’s future EVDO network, or go overseas, you can just ebay your card and buy another, rather than having to replace your whole laptop.

* Ditto if an even BETTER wireless technology than EVDO comes out someday.

* If you have a company (like us) with a lot of people remotely on call (like us), you can just buy a few EVDO cards and share them for whomever’s on call (like we do), rather than buy everybody a brand new (Dell/HP/Lenovo) laptop they probably don’t even want.

What I guess I’m saying is, I wouldn’t pay for one of these laptops just for the (still theoretically) better integration.

And I’m rich!

9 Responses to “EVDO Cards Rock!”

  1. Chris Says:
    September 21st, 2005 at 12:49 pm

    Anybody know if these cards work with Powerbooks?

  2. eecue Says:
    September 21st, 2005 at 2:15 pm

    I also love my EVDO card but I am pissed for two reasons:

    1. the service is now way cheaper and I am stuck in a long contract.

    2. I have a desktop at home and soon a mac mini with no pcmcia slot and I really want an EVDO USB dongle but as of yet there are none that ship.

    that is all.

  3. John Evans Says:
    September 21st, 2005 at 2:37 pm

    LOL buy a card, phone or laptop tied to an operator!!!

    Perhaps the US focus here stops you from realising the rest of the world uses GSM which uses sim cards. Which in turn means I buy a phone and stick a sim card from whomever I want in it, want to change operators? Get a new sim!

    I have been using such cards (albeit much slower) since 2002 and they are excellent, but since my phone can act as a bluetooth modem it kinda made the card redundant.

    But my main point is, when the overwhelming majority of the world uses one standard and the US uses another the odds of any specific laptops carrying a fairly neiche technology vs. mainstream (i.e. EDGE) are slim.

    So cards are the main means forward I am guessing

  4. Aaron Linville Says:
    September 21st, 2005 at 2:57 pm

    Chris, yes they do work and they are supported quite well (albeit the reps. in the Verizon stores will swear otherwise). :-)

    Here is a link to a good informative website about using Mac OS X and an EVDO card.

    http://evdoinfo.com/Tips/PC_5220/Mac_EVDO_20050712475/

    Here is a link to download the driver direct from Apple (though I think it’s included with 10.4 already).

    http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/verizonbroadbandaccesssupport.html

  5. nate Says:
    September 21st, 2005 at 3:47 pm

    Yeah, some of the cards work on Macs. I have a powerbook and the V620 card works, but just barely. You actually have to trick Mac OS X into use the 5220 card’s driver for the V620. And it connects and works, but the display of how many “bars” you have doesn’t work.

    And Verizon hasn’t been selling the 5220 for quite a while now. I ordered the first bunch of our shared EVDO cards maybe 5 months ago and they weren’t selling them then.

    We just ordered some more and the Kyocera 650 DOES work in Macs, but some other card they’re currently selling doesn’t work. Ask for the Kyocera by name.

  6. Borak Says:
    September 27th, 2005 at 10:03 pm

    I’m sneaky and I use EVDO through my cell phone for $15/month and connect it to my laptop. They don’t seem to notice that you use more than the average EVDO user, since I’ve clocked over 10GB in the last 6 months I’ve had service.

    It’s a great (not so much ethical) way to not spend $70/month for high speed wireless internet. :)

    EVDO is sure great, I average 700kbps and occasionally do reach the peak 2mbps they advertise in my area.

  7. dk Says:
    September 30th, 2005 at 9:45 pm

    Borak, maybe you could post the config info to make that work ;)

    IS EDGE the same sytem T-Mobile uses? Their service is only 29/month (so a bargain even at slower speed), which I could pull off, but 79/month is way out of my league!!!

  8. Dmitriy Says:
    December 19th, 2005 at 12:29 am

    WCDMA is the fastest mobile speed in phones. It also called 3G. But our operators don’t support it.

  9. adam Says:
    February 14th, 2006 at 6:30 pm

    my lenovo with evdo is the biggest piece of crap. the fingerprint reader only works 1 out of 5 times and the evdo just stopped working today. someone’s been one the phone with verizon for hours. thats like talking to a brick wall.

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