Post a Comment On: AstralBase

It's been an interesting and surprising day. I turned on my HDTivo in the basement tonite, and was shocked to find a new HD channel.... Universal HD. when did this happen? And why didn't DirecTV tell me? Basically, Universal and NBCTV has decided to make their archives into a channel. You know what.... I'll take it. Right now, I am starved for HD content, so kudos to DirecTV for finally moving forward and bringing us more of what we want. It's about damn time.

So, do you know EVDO? A few weeks ago, I didn't either. Then a buddy of mine introduced me to it. Basically, it's a high speed wireless data network that Verizon is building. Having recently aquired a Macintosh Power Book G4, I was looking for a way to go mobile with it. Sure, it had wireless 802.11 built in, but there are plently of places that don't have wifi hotspots. I checked into it and OSX supported the EVDO technology. But the problem was, it's implemented via a pcmcia card. When I bought my mac, I wanted something small... so I went with the 12" PowerBook. Well, the 12" didn't have a pcmcia port, so it was time to take it back. I reluctantly swapped it out for the 15", with visions of EVDO dancing in my head.

Then, I was brought back to earth. I went to verizon, and they said, the card isn't supported and doesn't work. Of course, defiant, I said, "but I have read that it works fine on the internet". "No, it does not work, they are wrong" I was told. Well, as usually is the case, I don't believe what I am always told. So, I went back to my office and ordered the Audiovox / Sierra 5220 PCMCIA Card. A day later to my shock, it arrived in the mail. Then the time of truth came. I plugged it in. All looked good... but it wouldn't connect. Maybe they were right. It might not work.

Not one to give up... I called tech support. I even set the software up on my PC so that I wouldn't get a load of crap from the tech support folks. Turns out, that my card got to me too quick and it just hadn't been activated yet. As soon as they ran things thru the system, I popped the card in the mac and BOOM, I was surfing high speed. Amazing! Now, to test it over the next 15 days and see how the network is. I have my fingers crossed.