Venturing Forth

  • 18 Aug
  • 2009
Posted by: Rory

For anyone unclear about the aim of my experiment, it’s to decide whether or not mobile broadband is fit to be used mainstream. Yesterday was my first day and was a day to try the ins and outs of the product.

For a first day venturing into the land of the mobile went rather well, I could complete most tasks without fail and without really having to wait for pages to load. Speed tests indicated that I wasn’t really browsing too fast and said that my latency was quite high, but to be honest I didn’t really notice while I was browsing.

The first few connection attempts to the network lasted only a few minutes and sometimes didn’t even connect, after unplugging it and plugging it back in, it found a juicy 3G connection and remained connected for 5 hours – I was the one who ended the connection this time.

Mobile feels like 20Mb fiber at peak times

Mobile feels like 10Mb fiber at a busy time in the day

For anyone who is reading this and wants a flavour of what using mobile broadband feels like, imagine you’re on a 10Mb connection from Virgin Media and it’s 7PM, everyone has just got home from work and have gone online, while all the kids in your area have decided to play WoW. That’s honestly how it feels – just like a normal connection that is being strained a little.

If I’m honest, I did use a little bit more bandwidth hungry applications today than I usually would to see just how it would hold up. Here’s a nice little log of the things that I did:

  • Internet Connection Sharing
  • Streaming music from last.fm
  • Watched an episode of Inu Yasha on Youtube
  • Uploaded images and files to a website
  • Began to download Fedora

Let’s go into each in a bit more detail, shall we? (more…)

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Categories: Internet, Mobile
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Monday is the beginning…

  • 15 Aug
  • 2009
Posted by: Rory

OF THE END!!!! No, only joking, but have a guess as to what it could be? Yep, it’s the beginning of my mobile broadband experiment, sponsored by Vodafone. There have been some questions about this, which I will come to later in the post.

I received a package yesterday morning, I’m quite used to packages because I do order quite a bit off the net, so it wasn’t really that much of a surprise – name, address and a little blue sticker on it. I knew it was something I’d been waiting a while for, my dongle.

There’s only 5 things in the box it comes in:

  1. The dongle itself
  2. An extension cable, so if you’re like me and your USB ports are arranged silly you can still have two things in at once.
  3. A user manual
  4. A Safety Manual
  5. A disc for Windows Users containing drivers.

It was quite an easy install really, pop the modem into the Mac, run an installer and then badaboom! I’m done, though I expect on Windows you need to put the CD in, instead. I did need to get used to it a bit before I start my experiment properly, so I decided that I’d have a quick play on it and see what it’s like. It wasn’t working at first, but a restart of the Mac gave it the kick it needed – looking back, the installer did say it wouldn’t work without a restart. (more…)

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Categories: Internet, Mobile
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Broadband Freedom

  • 11 Aug
  • 2009
Posted by: Rory
Mobile Broadband for a whole week, sponsored by Vodafone.

Mobile Broadband for a whole week, sponsored by Vodafone.

Back in the day of my old blog I tried to do an experiment to see if mobile broadband could withstand the usage of an Internet junkie like myself and was getting some pretty positive results. The experiment was to see if I could use Mobile Broadband as my primary internet connection for a month.

Unfortunately the experiment was never completed, so now I’m going to try it again. After evaluating the last attempt, I think that initially a month is far too long to try to use Mobile Broadband exclusively. So instead I’m going to try for a week initially and slowly build up over the course of the year – I reckon that if I get used to it I could use it full time.

Also, this time I’m going to keep a log book of the sorts of things that comes through my connection, so for example if I go on webcam, or if I watch a show on the iPlayer or even watch a YouTube video, I will record it.

To help me with this task I’ve teamed up with Vodafone who have provided me with the Mobile Broadband coverage. If you want to get involved with the experiment or decide that you want to go mobile, then head over the Vodafone store and get it.

The test starts very soon, so wish me luck!

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Categories: Internet
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Chrome OS

Posted by: Rory

Some of the biggest news to hit the technology world in a while just seemed to appear out of nowhere the other day, when Google announced the inevitable: they’re making an operating system. It’d been rumoured for a while, but Google are quite good at keeping secrets, so there was no real evidence that it was going to happen, until they made the announcement on their blog the other day. The name? (Google) Chrome OS.

Google announce their Chrome OS

Google announce their Chrome OS

In the days of the rumours, some even went so far as to make a Linux flavour that worked with a Mac Style Dock and only performed internet based tasks. The name of it was gOS. The website never made it very clear what the “g” in gOS was meant to stand for until just a tiny bit of disclaimer at the bottom of the website popped up, claiming that the “g” stood for “good”, crushing the rumours.

Back to the real Google OS. They’re are a web based company, so basing the operating system on the internet seems like a very smart move, which does beg the question: what if I’m not connected to the internet? Does the entire system buckle?

A few days after the press release, Google also announced a list of hardware partners who were prepared to make devices that would work with Chrome OS. Among those, was the chip maker ARM, British company who are just about the Intel of mobile computing. A lot of chips that go into mobile devices such as the iPhone are ARM chips. So announcing them as a hardware partner could mean one major thing that tackles the problem of always being connected to the web: an always on internet connection using mobile networks. (more…)

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