It has been a few days since I bought an EVDO card (using the excuse that my new office would not have Internet access for about a week), and I must say that I am totally bought in: this is the best productivity tool I have bought in a while, both in terms of convenience and time saved.
Time saved can be measured in the (sometime long) minutes one has to spend testing, configuring and sometimes paying for Wifi access. Convenience is due to the ability to access the Net during a “downtime” (like this morning when I waited for the airport shuttle) where this was no Wifi access point around.
Add to this the fact that the first couple of hours of a large conference is generally spent screwing around with a non-working Wifi (apparently Etech’s attendees faced that last week), and you will very quickly rationalize that $60 to $80 a month is *nothing*.
I for one had hesitated for a while not beig sure of the actual usage I would have of an EVDO contract, I thought I would help those of you who are facing the same interrogation.
PS: Stewart Alsop in the comments points out that this is also a solution for people riding buses or trains or cars (not the drivers!). I actually experimented this last week, going down highway 101 whilst IM'ing a friend.
PPS: Many PC Forum attendees are going through that time-wasting exercise of switching from one hotspot to the next. In the meantime Dan Farber and I are blogging. 'nough said.
Totally concur. Even in cars, although probably not good if you do email at 70 mph. Indeed, take the full fare option ($60/month from Sprint) and you wonder why use WiFi at all, since the speed is good enough for virtually anything, including most video.
Posted by: Stewart Alsop | March 12, 2006 at 08:42 PM