Working for a client in London today, so for a change, I decided to grab the train, rather than drive down to E14. This was therefore the perfect chance to try out the new USB Modem I picked up from Vodafone on the move.

Many of you will know I am a mac advocate, and use a G4 Powerbook as my main computer. As this computer has no pcmcia slot, there has been no easy way to connect the laptop to mobile data, other than by using your handset as a modem device.

This isn’t very convenient; the overhead of bluetooth seems to slow your connection down, and it means you can’t take calls and use mobile data at the same time.

However, Vodafone are now marketing the perfect solution – a mobile device that supports 3G and GPRS data connectivity, and presents over USB. The device is presently free on the £45/month unlimited data package.

Firstly, installing the bundled application was a breeze, and the Vodafone tool has a neat little installer which creates a Network Location for you, and sets up the built-in apple internet dialup tools, so no need to leave third party tools on your laptop, as you must with the Orange dialup tool on a Windows platform.

In Sheffield S11, there is only GPRS service, so I could dial up and check it worked, but wasn’t amazed. If my DSL dies, then it wont be a pleasure working on that for a whole day.

On the train, passing through the city centre, it is possible to enjoy what Vodafone describe as ’3G Broadband – with speeds up to 1.3Mbps’. Latency hurts me much more than actual throughput, as most of my work is done ssh’d into a remote server .. and the latency dips to really good/low levels when in this 3G Broadband mode..

64 bytes from 195.92.195.92: icmp_seq=1073 ttl=47 time=103.000 ms

When in normal 3G mode, Vodafone claim you should be able to shift 384Kbps, latency is still not a barrier to getting work done.

64 bytes from 195.92.195.92: icmp_seq=1471 ttl=47 time=260.176 ms

When in GPRS mode, the latency is really nothing to write home about, and the performance depends a lot on where you are (is much better on the approach to big cities, although this could be down to the fact that there’s a lot of slowing down on approach).

64 bytes from 195.92.195.92: icmp_seq=729 ttl=47 time=981.672 ms

All in I’ve managed to get some work (and some chatting on irc!) done, and it is making the trip pass quickly (this article was posted at high speed in south Leicestershire).
Will try a more scientific test when I use it for mobile working at less high speeds!