Can You Hear Me.... Hello?

The past week in Boston has been great for all the reasons I've enumerated elsewhere, but one continuing annoyance has been the troubles I've experienced with cellular reception - both for the phone and for my broadband card.

FYI: I'm a Sprint customer, and perhaps I should do some research on user comments about Sprint reception downtown and Back Bay. (Probably won't get to that soon.) I had trouble all week with dropped calls, and a broadband card that wouldn't ramp up to EVDO. This is on the 33rd floor of a hotel, so I wasn't exactly buried in the weeds, even though it felt like it. The conference floors had somewhat stronger reception but it was still fringe reception - dropping in and out of EVDO continually.

It makes me flinch because I spend $60 a month to access Sprint Wireless Broadband, and most of the time it's fast, reliable, and it saves me lots of connection charges at places like airports, Starbucks, hotels, etc. I tried my cell card for a day in the Powerbook, then gave up and spent $10 a day to get Marriott's ethernet connection. Kind of defeats the purpose to pay the equivalent of one month's access to Sprint broadband to get 6 days of hotel internet, especially when the Sprint card is in my bag.

Well, that's as close as I've come to a rant on a blog since 2001. I'll go no closer.

But let me give a shout-out to the DLink personal wireless router I bought a couple years ago for $60 or thereabouts. No more dragging along a 25 foot ethernet cable so you can sit on your bed and surf the web. Even with cellular wireless and wireless in hotel rooms more common, I still get great value out of this.

You know I never think to take that kit with me to meetings and stuff... it would be an excellent wireless solution for everyone. hmmm.... now what should I charge for that? :)