Access from anywhere; WiFi and dialup

[Jeff]

iPass has been around for quite some time now, but it's always been kinda problematic to sign up to use. That seems to have recently ended with a 'partnership' of sorts with good olde mail2web in the act as the frontman. Go here:

http://services.mail2web.com/Travelers/InternetAccess/

However note the rather limiting OS and browser requirements on the right side of the signup page:

CONNECTION CLIENTS
Overview of the
client application and
system requirements

- Jeff

[Gary Maltzen]

iPass has been around for quite some time now, but it's always been kinda problematic to sign up to use.FWIW: I've had a personal iPass account through Roam International (http://www.roamintl.com) for several years. The iPass site (http://www.ipass.com) use to list numerous 'retailers' through which you could obtain an account.

[Judy G. Russell]

FWIW: I've had a personal iPass account through Roam International (http://www.roamintl.com) for several years. The iPass site (http://www.ipass.com) use to list numerous 'retailers' through which you could obtain an account.I went to look at Roam International and was a bit put off by the home page coding...

[ndebord]

iPass has been around for quite some time now, but it's always been kinda problematic to sign up to use. That seems to have recently ended with a 'partnership' of sorts with good olde mail2web in the act as the frontman.

Jeff,

Since I run W98se and K-Meleon or FireFox, the min OS of W2000 and the use of IE6sr1 leaves me out of this one.

<g>

[Jeff]

Jeff,

Since I run W98se and K-Meleon or FireFox, the min OS of W2000 and the use of IE6sr1 leaves me out of this one.

<g>

Yeah, and I don't know why they do that since they do offer dialup, and always have.

- Jeff

[ndebord]

Yeah, and I don't know why they do that since they do offer dialup, and always have.

- Jeff

Jeff,

I'm looking at cellular high speed, or rather cellular medium-low speed. My cellphone carrier is Deutsche Telecom, aka T-Mobile. They have just gotten around to introducing EDGE service, which is 3 times dialup speed. For another 20 bucks on top of the 50 I already spend for a 2 phone family plan, I will get unlimited data. Not very fast when compared to everything else except dialup.

They rolled it out the 1st of September and are still running around like chickens minus their heads....poor training imo. A PCMCIA card will work in W98se...sign another contract for 2 years and get a couple of new phones. One of which will be something that can plug into a cradle and into which you can put an RJ11 cable to your old landline, so you can talk in comfort at home and I think I'm in business. At least that is my tentative plan. The other plan is to continue to use Wi-Fi hotspots. Paying for 2 phones from Verizon is 60 bucks plus another 60 for EDVO is too painful to contemplate. Of course if this all works out, I dump Verizon and dialup at home altogether, which is all to the good as my line goes to a water-logged underground cable that often gives me 14.4 speed during rainstorms!

[Gary Maltzen]

I went to look at Roam International and was a bit put off by the home page coding...
OK, I can't even get to them tonight.
Generic instructions: Go to www.ipass.com (http://www.ipass.com) and select the Reseller Locator, then your country and "Individual".
Different resellers have different plans. The Roam International plan was $100 down and then time online counted against the deposit.

[Judy G. Russell]

That sure does sound like a decent deal, Gary. Thanks.

[ndebord]

Jeff,

Well, I went out and did it. I now have T-Mobile's Edge Service for $19.99 on top of my family plan for 2 phones at $49.99 a month (tax not included).

Unlimited data. In Bayonne, I commonly get 2 to 3 times dialup. In da city, I get 3 times dialup. They promise incremental upgades down the road. No longer do I have to rely upon WiFi cafes when I'm on the road.

Caveats. Works in the deep South and the East and West Coasts and parts of the Midwest and West. Whole sections of the country have spotty, at best, coverage.

I'm looking into a docking station now to tie my old landline phones into my cellphone. Then I'll dump Verizon altogether.

Figure a month to see how it all shakes out.

[Lindsey]

Well, I went out and did it. I now have T-Mobile's Edge Service for $19.99 on top of my family plan for 2 phones at $49.99 a month (tax not included).
Keep us posted on how you like it. I've been thinking about T-Mobile myself.

--Lindsey

[ndebord]

Keep us posted on how you like it. I've been thinking about T-Mobile myself.

--Lindsey

Lindsey,

I like it a lot so far. There are options to look for, such as the type of Sony Ericsson Air Card you get. They offer a GC79 for 190 bucks or so...way too high, but it does have both the radio card and WiFi. I bought a GC83 (just the radio, not Wifi) from eBay for 120...a better deal, but I don't like the card because it has an external antenna that is way too fragile to suit me. I think there is a GC 85 out there and perhaps a GC 89 that have internal antennas but those too stick out of the pcmcia slot, but just horizontally a little, not up in the air like my model does.

Haven't figured out yet how to get my POP3 email clients working (OE, Foxmail), but that is probably just a setting or proxy somewhere that I have misconfigured. Right now, if I use it, I go online and grab my email there...a minor pita, but it has to be fixed down the road.

Anyhow, I'm connected right now using the air card and I'm getting a little less than triple Dialup, which I think is probably the optimum speed you'll see with this EDGE technolgy that T-Mobile got from Cingular.

The bottom line is I don't want to spend 60 bucks for Verizon's much faster service in addition to whatever they are currently charging for 2 phones...probably another 60 bucks. And since I am no longer locked into a plan with T-Mobile, I was able to add the EDGE/GPRS service for just the additional bucks...didn't have to sign a contract, so I can move whenever I want to. (I never let them give me a new phone...I just buy them from eBay whenever necessary since to get a new phone you have to sign up for another year or two.

[Lindsey]

Thanks for the report! Sounds interesting--I'll have to check it out further.

--Lindsey

[ndebord]

Thanks for the report! Sounds interesting--I'll have to check it out further.
--Lindsey

Lindsey,

It's still earlier on for T-Mobile with this. They only rolled it out on Sept. 1 and they still are hazy about what it does and what firmware it supports. Hold times for TSR are abominable, as you have to get through Tier 1, Tier 2 and on to Tier 3 (Wireless Data Card) to get someone who really knows what is going on.


Anyhow, still haven't figured out POP3. Another day for that call. And I have figured out that I can buy the proper Nokia phone on eBay that will work as a docking station so I can continue to use my ancient AT&T pots phone. Just a question of which of the various converters out there is good enough to do the job and at what cost. Don't really have to do that option, but I like my landline phones and I'm still skeptical about cell phones right up against my brain! (I know, I'm paranoid...but then I'm superstitous too, a carryover from Army days!

[Gary Maltzen]

Nick,

Keep us posted. I, too, am a T-Mobile subscriber having acquired a taste for GSM while living in Hong Kong and a distaste for AT&T when I attempted to switch to their GSM service. After acquiring a RAZR (unlocked) for use on the T-Mobile service in June, I was pleased to see them make it official Sep 1. I dropped their hotspot service after not using it for a year and picked up their "web" (GPRS) service.

[ndebord]

Gary,

GM> Keep us posted. I, too, am a T-Mobile subscriber having acquired a taste for GSM while living in Hong Kong and a distaste for AT&T when I attempted to switch to their GSM service. After acquiring a RAZR (unlocked) for use on the T-Mobile service in June, I was pleased to see them make it official Sep 1. I dropped their hotspot service after not using it for a year and picked up their "web" (GPRS) service.

The way I see it, GSM is the world...all those other technologies are just USA (or South Korea). When I go to Europe next Spring, I want to be able to use an unlocked Nokia phone with T-Mobile Deutsche Telecom and buy a pay as you go plan while there. No contracts for me any time soon. Things are changing way too fast to be locked in for 1 to 2 years.

My plan does GPRS/EDGE, so I can get and have gotten email through my cellphone. A real PITA from my perspective. GPRS sounds like a good deal with the RAZR card. The plan that I have with T-mobile costs me $19.99 in addition to the $49.99 for 2 phones with their cheaper family plan (400 minutes). I set up an email forwarding plan with T-mobile.com to pull my POP3 headers to my cell phone, but that is way too much stuff coming in, so I just cancelled that one out altogether.

Because I'm only paying $19.99, I ahve to pull the sim card from my cellphone and put it into the Sony-Ericsson Aircard. A PITA. For $29.99 a month, they'll give me a data only SIM card....really just the same SIM card for another ten bucks monthly. As I said to the salesman: "Not on my dime!" (The ancillary benefit is I've become very proficient at taking the back off of Nokia phones!)

Still haven't figured out how to get my POP3 email into either OE or Foxmail, but I guess I will have to use my landline to call TSR and sit on hold for God knows how long, while connected with my Aircard and then set the whole thing up on line and save the info to the help file I'm compiling.

They don't have much of anything useful online and the Sony-Ercisson GC83 PDF file is helpful with the firmware, but not with the T-Mobile (or Cingular) services.

P.S. I love HK...my wife is from Kowloon and I've been there off and on since 1968. Love the bus ride on Nathan Road! (and the Star Ferry...and...and....)

[Gary Maltzen]

Is this the info you seek?
POP3 server - myemail.t-mobile.com
SMTP server - myemail.t-mobile.com
username - 8005551212:1 (i.e., your cellular number suffixed with colon-one)
password - the actual account (e.g., albert@einstein.com) password

From 1994-1997 I lived in Pacific View ("Long Commune") on the south side of the island, just east of Stanley. Enjoyed the double-decker ride over the pass into Central and the absolute tranquility of taking the Star Ferry between Central and Kowloon.

[ndebord]

Is this the info you seek?
POP3 server - myemail.t-mobile.com
SMTP server - myemail.t-mobile.com
username - 8005551212:1 (i.e., your cellular number suffixed with colon-one)
password - the actual account (e.g., albert@einstein.com) password

From 1994-1997 I lived in Pacific View ("Long Commune") on the south side of the island, just east of Stanley. Enjoyed the double-decker ride over the pass into Central and the absolute tranquility of taking the Star Ferry between Central and Kowloon.


Gary,

Saw that while touring the island. Had a cousin (wife's side) who ran a tourist biz and had one of those ubiquitous Japanese van/buses who ran us all around the island. Got the Japanese tourist tour for free plus better food.

Went back to HK one time with my father-in-law who had emigrated to the "Golden Mountain" in 1967, I believe, and had never returned until he went back with me grudgingly. Turns out not only was he the Patriarch of the family tree, but when the Japenese took HK, he was working for the U.S. Army as a cook. He had scare to obtain train passes and took as many of the family as he could reach out of town to the south of China. So we spent 14 days doing lunches and banquets every single day as the family lined up to get together with him. His banquet, which I arranged, was in a large HK hotel and we had somewhere between 2 & 3 hundred people show up. (My dime.) Luckily the manager was a cousin, so to say we got a big discount would be an understatement!

[ndebord]

Is this the info you seek?
POP3 server - myemail.t-mobile.com
SMTP server - myemail.t-mobile.com
username - 8005551212:1 (i.e., your cellular number suffixed with colon-one)
password - the actual account (e.g., albert@einstein.com) password


Gary,

I don't think that is what I want to do, since I am sharing the data and phone sim, but I'll try it. I was trying to get my POP3 email from my other email address to work with them. I was trying this:

POP3 Server - mail.isp.com
POP3 Accnt - ndebord@isp.com
SMTP Server - myemail.t-mobil.com

But it erred out with OE (my testbed for this, as I don't want to even tell them that I use something called Foxmail even though they have more customers than OE!)

[Gary Maltzen]

>> POP3 Accnt - ndebord@isp.com

Do you typically include the "@domain.tld" part when logging into the POP3 server?