How do you toss up 500+ posts at CES and the Macworld Keynote without hooking up to a single WiFi or hard ethernet port? You rock some cellular data. Every person on the team had either a USB dongle by Novatel (the U720), or a Sierra Aircard 595 PC Card. That's thanks to Sprint, who loaned us the cards on the condition that we'd give em feedback on how they worked in Vegas and SF. They were incredible.

To mix it up, I occasionally used an expresscard from Verizon on my Macbook. Although Verizon hasn't officially upgraded revision A, they're the only EV-DO company to have expresscards, the native expansion slot for the Macbook Pros many Gizmodo bloggers use.

Not that getting the USB dongles from Sprint fixed everything. We had depend on a hack from the EV-DO forums that allow OS X to use the USB devices. The resulting reception and performance made it worth the trouble.

We had reception in basements of the Sands, when our phones and other EV-DO cards couldn't pick up a damn thing, and WiFi was saturated by hundreds of journalists trying to file. And in the electric din of the Las Vegas Convention Center's halls, we uploaded probably a thousand photos, and dozens of videos, not to mention tens of thousands of words of ill crafted prose. And speeds were consistently good enough to not impede our work flow.

As soon as these loaners go back to Sprint, and they come out with and expresscard, I'm going to actually throw down a portion of my paycheck every month for the service. A rare endorsement for a guy –Brian Lam

Sprint Mobile Broadband[Gizmodo]

11:00 PM on Thu Jan 11 2007
By Brian Lam
1,982 views
11 comments

Comments

Derek at 11:58 PM on 01/11/07
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The Novatel U720 & Sprint's Rev. A service is definitely top notch. At one point I continued telling myself that an ExpressCard solution would be exactly what I needed, a USB version allows you to use the card wherever you go with any computer. I usually pass mine between the MacBook Pro, the iBook, and the Mac Pro. A lifesaver whenever while on the road or whenever the Comcraptasstic goes down.
Brad at 04:54 AM on 01/12/07
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I've really liked my EvDO Rev. A. It's awesome. I'm out in SB, and I get a better connection to my phone than to my house with Cox's crappy cable service.
StackyBotrus at 08:11 AM on 01/12/07
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SPLENDOCREDULOUS!
Galley at 09:18 AM on 01/12/07
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I'm glad you're loving your Rev. A service. Some of use poor bastards are still waiting for Rev. 0.
Erwos at 10:08 AM on 01/12/07
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I've got Sprint EVDO Rev. 0 on my smartphone, and it's friggin' awesome. You can't go back once you've started using it hard-core, and I would assume this is similarly true of competing technologies like HSDPA. I'm not sure whether I need the speed of Rev. A (I don't tether, generally), but I like the idea of it being available. Speaking of which, EVDO has been present in 95% of the places I've been lately - the coverage is really fantastic.

Then again, I know they're going to start doing trials of WiMax here in DC. I should try to get in on THAT!
Monty at 10:22 AM on 01/12/07
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The EVDO network is amazing, and is the first cellular data network that is faster than Richochet's network before they shut down in the dot com crash. In fact, it is so impressive that it is a bit surprising that Apple would pick Cingular and their craptastic data network for their Jesus Phone. Oh well.
drewheyman at 10:53 AM on 01/12/07
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sprint is bleeding customers, employees, executives, and money. cingular is growing like crazy.

its pretty obvious why apple chose cingular over sprint. now over verizon, who knows?
DomZ at 01:18 PM on 01/12/07
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I'm looking at getting a PPC-6700 from Sprint. I was considering getting the same phone from Verizon but if Sprint worked that great for you guys then I'm in.
kapitan at 03:40 PM on 01/12/07
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My company uses Sprint's EV-DO service to process credit card transactions from our booth at trade shows. Although we've been in a few places that didn't have EV-DO coverage (and had to resort to 1xRTT) we're usually the only vendor with the capability at all! We will put the card in one laptop and share the connection (WinXP) over wi-fi with 3 other laptops. Works better than you'd think!
rimplestultskin at 09:14 AM on 01/13/07
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sprint really is pretty good with their service. i still use release 0 EVDO, and sprint has less restrictions than another certain CDMA company, for less money, and just as good, if not better, service. and I hear sprint trounces everyone in the Rev. A game, so it would be really dumb of apple to not release something with sprint's EVDO tied into it (maybe the 3G iPhone will go CDMA on us, or an MBP with an ath 64 and built in power vision, ooh la la.).
EVDOInfo at 08:44 AM on 05/05/07
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Kyocera will soon be announcing firmware RK1010 that provides full support for the U720/USB720 as well as the PX500/PC5750.

As with prior firmware releases, EVDOinfo.com and 3GStore.com are first to sell KR1 routers with this new firmware! ...for more info, read:

http://www.evdoinfo.com/content/view/1973/64/