 Orange MOC
So in addition to my ever increasing number of communication methods I've aquired a "Novatel Wireless" 3G data card, or the Orange Mobile Office Card to you and me.
Now I was quite excited about this, I used to have the Orange HSCSD card and I loved it, was one of the first remote data devices I had, and I thought it was the dogs knackers 'cos it ran at 28.8k, not 9.6k, what a step up I thought. So the MOC turned up last week, I thought it best to give it a run in before posting on here.
First, the SW. Now it has lots of warnings posted all over it as you take it out the box informing you not to insert it into your laptop before you load the drivers and SW etc. Fine, did that, slid the card into the slot on the side and up comes "initialising"... then occasionally I start getting "no network found" what?! I know fine well there's coverage! Now admittedly I'm only finding the no network thing happens when I'm outwith 3G coverage, within 3G coverage it seems to be OK. But there's more issues. Now the MOC SW is installed you'd think every time I turned on the laptop I could just place the card in and it'd work 1st time? Nope. It fails to initialise every time on the first attempt, you need to remove the hardware, using the windows remove hardware thingy then re-insert. And I'm also finding you need to let the card start up, get onto the network etc (there's a little LED on it showing it's state; red for initialising, green for 2.5G coverage and blue for 3G) before running the MOC SW. Now I thought to myself, I can cope with the start up problems, once I'm connected and away I'm not fussed, a couple of extra minutes is nothing. Until I was surfing away on a 2.5G connection. It just suddenly stopped displaying web pages! The MOC says it's still connected, and the solid green LED would indicate so too, but IE and Firefox claim there's no connection to the internet. I'm stumped. So at the moment, well till I get back in 3G coverage, the MOC is going back in the bag and I'm back to my ever reliable 6650 BT connection (which is how I'm posting this).
It's such a let down! The actual hardware is great! When it's working the connection speeds are great, 3G is very quick and even 2.5G GPRS connections are much quicker than my BT -> 6650 2.5G GPRS connection. But the SW that comes with it... if I could find a way around installing the card without the Orange supplied SW it'd be absolutely brilliant.
I'd be interested to hear if anyone else is having similar problems, either with the Orange, Voda or T-Mob cards.
For something that's completely aimed at the business user, someone that needs their internet connection, the HW is great the SW is rubbish! If this standard keeps up Orange will find it difficult to; 1. Move business subs over from other networks while the SW is this flakey and 2. Convince users to pick a 3G card & connection over a WiFi hotspot or similar.
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1st June 2005, 07:16 PM
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