How Fast Does Anyone Use Up 5 Gb?, Air Cards/Cellular Modems Options

[RLM]

Thanks for asking Lonesoldier.
As a US schooled boomer, educated in the era of Fortran, ....

Hey, I'm right there with you. How about Basic and Cobol. I once owned a Sinclair 1000. Oh man I'm old!!!

[Lindsay Richards]

The hard drive on my first Epson computer was a microcassette tape. Took 2 1/2 minutes for reel to real for 10 K. I thought I was in heaven. I wrote a 16 K program in Basic and had to run it at work. I got a Tandy handheld and had to input it all with the keyboard. I have a 160 gig hard drive now and think it is too small.

[Lee and Fran]

I bought a Verizon Card last year just to test it out as compared to my satellite system. If I am going to You tube, news pages, or down loading music I can burn thru 5 gig in a month easily. Thats part of the reason I am trying it. With my Satellite system I am allow 250 megs a day in downloads and when I am doing all of the above I go thru 250 megs easily and get locked out of the net for 24 hours there after. It does not take a lot of news or you tubes to make 250 megs. As for downloading anything larger than the 250 we have to go use the net between 2 and 5 am. Other wise we have to use the verizon card.

[Sunny_0ne]

I usually use 2.5 to 3 GB a month on my Verizon Air Card.

I don't download movies, but do watch a lot of YouTube videos, download a program now and then, and surf a lot.

Only one month in over three years did I come close to 5 GB.

[DXSMac]

March was the first month I "held my breath" on my air card. I was camp hosting the entire month. When I was in Kentucky last summer for two months, I never exceeded 1 gig per month, all I did was email and net surfing. Didn't do TV shows or music streaming.

However, during March, I was in a place with no TV reception. So, I HAD to watch "24." Hey, it's the last season! Gotta watch Jack!

Well, between streaming "24" every Tuesday morning (three "one hour" episodes and one "two hour" episode) and streaming music (one of my friends got me hooked on this) every day, I still stayed UNDER the 5 gig limit, but BARELY!

Limit is 5 gig, I used 4.8 gig.

Glad I'm a "Solo." If I would have had someone else sharing the air card with me (like a spouse or whatever) would not have been a good thing.

JJ

[coacbcps]

1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1000 kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
1000 Megabytges = 1 Gigabyte
1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte
1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
1000 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte
1000 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte
1000 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte

Where do they come up with these names? Is this the metric version of million, billion, trillion, etc? What do those prefixes mean? I know kilo is 1000 and mega means "large; great". What exactly is giga-, tera-, peta-, exa-, and zetta-? I'm looking in my daughter's dictionary and apparently these techno terms are not listed.

[Bud in Florida]

I have had a verizon card for 2 years and just switched to a cell phone that can act as a hot spot. My wife does on line teaching and I spend a lot of time on line looking at campground reviews etc. No streaming video or music and we have never used more than a couple of Gbs.

[joez]

We have a Sprint aircard that we use with a Cradlepoint router. Two of us use computers, with a very limited amount of videos, music, etc downloads. The router with aircard is on most of the time. Luckily we are still grandfathered with unlimited usage. So far this month (with 8 days remaining) we have used 5,456,847 KB (Their billing statement says 1 GB = 1,048,576 KB). Even though we are entitled to new free aircard, we would have to revert to the 5 GB limit so we are still using our old Sierra. A Sprint rep did tell me during a phone conversation that the 4G cards will not have usage limits, but as of now there is limited 4G coverage in areas where we are.

[Lindsay Richards]

On my new Verizon Droid phone, we have unlimited for $30 a month, it does surfing, but the screen size is restrictive.

[Denali]

On my new Verizon Droid phone, we have unlimited for $30 a month, it does surfing, but the screen size is restrictive.

You know you can tether it and use it as a modem, right? PdaNet for Droid

It works very well using the USB cable, but I can't get it to work with Bluetooth. Others, however, have reported using PdaNet with Bluetooth, so it's probably a driver conflict with my Bluetooth dongle.

[Lindsay Richards]

Do I understand this to mean, I can use the Droid to hook up my laptop to the Verizon internet netwowrk?

[Denali]

Do I understand this to mean, I can use the Droid to hook up my laptop to the Verizon internet netwowrk?

Sorry I didn't reply sooner, Lindsay. I haven't checked in since you posted.

Yes, with PdaNet you hook your Droid to your laptop using a USB cable. The Droid will act as a modem, just like any other cellular data device. You use your Droid's Verizon Internet connection. You will get the same speed on your laptop as you do using the Droid by itself on the Internet.

Feel free to contact me off-list if you want more details: denali@alaska.net.

There is also a good Yahoo forum on this topic, for any cell phone: Internet By Cell Phone (I am the owner of the forum.)

[Lindsay Richards]

It has a USB adapter on the computer end, what does it have on the Droid end?

[Denali]

It has a USB adapter on the computer end, what does it have on the Droid end?

The Droid uses a standard micro USB cable. It ships with a cable, but many folks buy a longer one.

[Lindsay Richards]

My charge has a micro USB on one end and a regular USB on the other. i thought it was for charging from the computer. Thanks, now I know. I guess I should actually read the instruction manual.