[TriLUG] OT: cell phone reccomendations

[Stephen Hoffman]

I have Nextel and while the cellular service is acceptable, the data
service leaves a lot to be desired.  I used it for about two months as we
did a lot of traveling over the summer.  I was able to connect from the
laptop to the phone at 115k...BUT still only connected to the Internet at
28.8k.  The major downside is that is is a pay service, $10/per month and
it still used my airtime minutes (thank god for unlimited evening and
weekend minutes).  The plus is I had no trouble setting it up to work with
windows, and with some monkeying and googling I got it to work as a normal
modem in linux.  So my recommendation:  The walkie-talkie feature beats
Verizon and Sprint hands down (I'm an ex-RadioShacker and still get the
dirt from friends) as they both have about an 8 second delay i.e.:
My End         Their End
"Hello"   1s
          2s
          3s
          4s
          5s
          6s
          7s
          8s    "Hello"

Notice they aren't pushing that service much right now.  The compatibility
is there for data calls in linux (no idea about Mac) but really isn't
worth the $10 / month.

Steve