Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
AT&T Alternative For Portable Internet
- Thread starter funkateer
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Ah, that's VERY new pricing! I just fished around in my email for "Virgin Mobile" and see they changed it on March 8th, 2010. A bit after I used the thing.
Turns out I got 1gb for $60, not the 500mb I originally thought (only 5 times worse than industry standard, not 10 as I originally thought, heh!) Sorry about that... That little cap, though, ensured I'd never touch YouTube or Netflix, though. Had me too scared to. I've never been a friend of overages.
Here's all the changes for people who want 'em:
The $20 was 250mb, now it's 300mb. A nice little bump.
The $30 was 600mb, now it's 1gb. A better bump.
The $50 was 1gb per month, now it's 5gb. A HUGE bump, and an industry match!
Now, it's not such a bad deal! These are pretty much what you get with contract plans. Maybe I'll activate it again sometime for overage.
I just got my second Overdrive bill, and since friends who were less careful than me were using the Wifi when we were in 3g zones, it went over a bit and I got a ~$170 bill instead of ~$60 last month.
Looks like Overdrives overages are about $50 per gigabyte. Ridiculous. I could've had both the Virgin stick and Verizon Mifi, each with their own 5gb cap (3 devices @ 15gb total) going on for just about they charged me for a ~2.2 gig overage.
Yeah, I gotchya. You're right, Virgin is very good now pricing wise! Lots of flexibility and a true industry match so there's no major downside aymore.
I originally picked it up, because every extra inquiry on your credit tends to be frowned on by FICO for a couple months (you can lose 2 to 20 points temporarily)... and didn't know what mobile internet was "best", I just knew I was going crazy hunting down wifi spots where I was (moving between San Diego, OC and LA for about a month -- the entire "southland", basically)
I didn't like the prospect of trying 3 or 4 different contract ones, to get a useless credit inquiry for each one, not to mention the long application process compared to prepaid, and possibly having to pay a $150 to $175 disconnect fee for each.
The Virgin prepaid was the obvious choice to get me goin' with the basic tasks I absolutely needed to do (like email), despite the 1gb cap at the time (December of 09). At the time, you just paid $100 for the hardware, filled out a simple form online, updated the stick in Parallels (the only "pain in the ass" part), and then you were off using it in OS X, too.
The Overdrive is what I settled for a contract one, because it has "unlimited" in 4g areas... but you can see that only goes so far. If you actually let other people use it (it's designed to service 5 computers at once), and if you're NOT in one of the very few 4g areas, you can get dinged for overages very eaily.
Now since looks like the Virgin pricing is just as good as anyone else, so why not? From what I hear, they're a bit faster than Verizon, too, although Verizon wins in coverage. The motorcoach and RV people I talked to on the road that go to the more "off the map" type places like Verizon best for coverage alone.
Yeah, I have both the Clear portable and "house" modems for the Portland area. I use the portable one around town, and the house one as a backup to the only semi-reliable cable internet I have at the house.
I just got back from a cross country roadtrip, where I picked up an Overdrive. The Overdrive, using the same network as Clear, is a bit faster than the native Clear boxes. I should benchmark 'em.
It's remarkable that the Overdrive packs so much in one little box -- both 3g and 4g modems, as well as a wifi router -- and seems to be even faster than the "big" 4g modem Clear provides for house usage. A great example of technology getting faster and cheaper (except for overages when you're forced to use 3g!)
I went through http://3gstore.com/lease to get a Verizon MiFi for $50/month. I'm loving it so far.
Activation was a bitch because the Verizon software is utter **** but once it's activated you don't need to use it on your Mac again.
The nice thing is that I'm paying 10 dollars less a month than if I got an Overdrive or went directly through Verizon and I can use this for as long as I want under the lease and send it all back if I don't want it anymore or keep the device after 2 years.
Even if I want it for only one year I'm saving 30 dollars on the device if I got a 1-year contract from Verizon (which I was considering) and 120 dollars over a course of a year with service. 150 bucks savings total is nice. And if I decide to drop it in less than a year I definitely paid a lot less than a month-to-month agreement with Verizon
I trust the company. They're based not too far from me and have been extremely helpful when I ****ed up and thought I selected FedEx shipping and instead chose Will Call.
I drove around with it last night and used my iPad every once in a while when I wasn't moving to see how it worked - did amazing. And, from what I can tell, it doesn't allow great wifi location but it does do enough that it can pick up where you are. It was good enough to impress me.
I'm happy with it so far. I'll use it for work when I go to customers with no Internet connection or my work-provideded AirCard sucks (which is often), I'll be traveling this summer and my iPad is going to be my main source for communications then, and I'll be making trips in my car through areas with only EDGE coverage and also have an iBook, iPad, and iPhone 3G all in the car that could use the MiFi.
Activation was a bitch because the Verizon software is utter **** but once it's activated you don't need to use it on your Mac again.
The nice thing is that I'm paying 10 dollars less a month than if I got an Overdrive or went directly through Verizon and I can use this for as long as I want under the lease and send it all back if I don't want it anymore or keep the device after 2 years.
Even if I want it for only one year I'm saving 30 dollars on the device if I got a 1-year contract from Verizon (which I was considering) and 120 dollars over a course of a year with service. 150 bucks savings total is nice. And if I decide to drop it in less than a year I definitely paid a lot less than a month-to-month agreement with Verizon
I trust the company. They're based not too far from me and have been extremely helpful when I ****ed up and thought I selected FedEx shipping and instead chose Will Call.
I drove around with it last night and used my iPad every once in a while when I wasn't moving to see how it worked - did amazing. And, from what I can tell, it doesn't allow great wifi location but it does do enough that it can pick up where you are. It was good enough to impress me.
I'm happy with it so far. I'll use it for work when I go to customers with no Internet connection or my work-provideded AirCard sucks (which is often), I'll be traveling this summer and my iPad is going to be my main source for communications then, and I'll be making trips in my car through areas with only EDGE coverage and also have an iBook, iPad, and iPhone 3G all in the car that could use the MiFi.
Ironically...
Ironically, after starting this thread and being a cheerleader for the Sprint Virgin/Cradlepoint option, I wound up jailbreaking my iPhone with Spirit and installing MyWi. It works great, and obviously a) doesn't cost me any extra money for a data plan and b) has no cap on data usage.
So now, if the MyWi keeps working well, apparently I'm going to have to sell a AT&T 881 USB stick I had from before, AND the Virgin USB stick. Though I guess I'll see how MyWi works with the 4.0 and next version of jb before I get rid of the Virgin stick...
Ironically, after starting this thread and being a cheerleader for the Sprint Virgin/Cradlepoint option, I wound up jailbreaking my iPhone with Spirit and installing MyWi. It works great, and obviously a) doesn't cost me any extra money for a data plan and b) has no cap on data usage.
So now, if the MyWi keeps working well, apparently I'm going to have to sell a AT&T 881 USB stick I had from before, AND the Virgin USB stick. Though I guess I'll see how MyWi works with the 4.0 and next version of jb before I get rid of the Virgin stick...
the "this" in my quote is referring to using "alternative for portable internet" (mifi,sprint, etc)..
Rephrase: Does alternatives to AT&T's 3G for iPad give you the ability to do GPS?