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I was a little skeptical after mixed reviews but decided to go for it and couldn't be happier. Only down side was it took a while to get set up but tech support was excellent. Now it's up and running just fine and I'm away from home at my grandmother's and I'm able to use internet here for the first time. Speed is better than I was expecting, actually, so I'm very pleased.
I have had the USB727 for about a month and love it. It is nice to have the micro SD slot to transfer files. It connects quickly and stays connected without fail. The speeds are good and coverage is great. It is easy to check and monitor usage. Buying on Amazon saved me money too.
We can get out of our one-year contract and return the "free" pc card which is valued at $299. The price for the service is $60/month, the same amount we were paying for Comcast's at-home internet service. Verizon's fastest and largest capacity service uses the Verizon Wireless USB727 EVDO Rev A USB Modem. After all, AT&T will need to feed heavy demands of all those iPhone owners. We use our laptop to watch a variety of shows online. But it is really frustrating.Again, we're held hostage by our high demands and technology not quite there yet.A little speculation: I bet once the iPhone can view Flash-based graphics, we'll see connection speeds increase dramatically across all cellphone companies.
Our problem concerns watching videos online and may have more to do with Verizon's slower connection speed coupled with times when more people are using the internet. Basic web surfing is great. If we try to watch a video during a peak time -- when a lot of other people are surfing the internet -- forget it. At best, the connection is extremely choppy, the video stopping every 10 seconds or so. My husband and I switched from Comcast's internet cable to Verizon's Wifi service so we can have wireless access on our laptop wherever we have cellphone service. to 5 a.m)., most likely when less people are online. This is a big downer for us, because we don't have a TV.
Like many people, we don't plan to change our sleeping schedule. Thankfully, we're still in the 30-day return period. We find the latter situation to occur most often. The service and pc card were easy to install and set up for our MacBookPro. Is this enough for us to cancel our Verizon wifi service.
At worst, you can't see the video at all. My husband discovered we can watch these same videos easily and without too much interruption in the early morning hours (ie., 3:30 a.m. Probably not. Oh well, for now.
All I can say is that the modem works well in XP, well in Ubuntu 8.10. I used Ubuntu 8.10 which recognizes the broadband device through its "network manager". After having successfully used this modem with Windows XP on a eee pc 900 16gb SSD, 1GB ram, I decided to switch back to a linux platform since XP did not run as fast as the linux platform did on this netbook. The CD that is shipped with the USB727 modem is for OS X and Windows. Reception at home is pretty good (2-3 bars, about the same as my cell phone) and even better outside the house. I can't comment on the cell plans/broadband plans and cost because everyone's usages will differ. Linux support is available for "business/government" customers only through Verizon customer service. The CD contains the dialing software and the app that will allow you to track your usage.
The tech support guy was very rude and basically said this speed is normal and "broadband". I tested everywhere including in house, on the road, airport etc. I've own a Verizon data card for over a year now and the connection speed is becoming extremely slow. He also tried to come up with excuses such as you are indoor although he had to agree that my signal strength was good. The avg download is about 400K and upload 140K. These are significantly slower than what I was promised at the store and the results of my tests when I first bought it (800K/400K).I called Verizon. He also said as long as you could connect, you couldn't argue because there was no promise of the speed on the contract. (So basically even if your speed was 1K, they wouldn't see a problem with it).My conclusion, I will never use Verizon again.
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