Job Discussion Forums

guest of Japan · Joined: 28 Feb 2003 Posts: 1601 Location: Japan

Sprite, the type of wireless service you are talking about is painfully slow and quite expensive. But if you really want it then check out AirH. There are a slew of different services that you can learn about from a cell phone store.

shmooj · Joined: 11 Sep 2003 Posts: 1758 Location: Seoul, ROK

the range is not as good as I had thought. The one at school works fine over about a twenty metre radius but mine at home struggles with the connection over only about 5 metres.

I put this down to the fact that our school is a bunch of prefab rooms separated by paper thin walls. Our home is an apartment with thicker wooden walls. I've noticed it can really make a difference where your modem is. Put it as high up as you can. This seems to help.

In any case, don't believe the guff in the advertising especially for the 23Mb modems. This speed is only possible if you live right next to your telephone exchange and even then you are unlikely to get a perfect connection. Personally, I can't understand why you would want a faster connection than 11Mb ADSL seeing as the net is only as fast as its weakest link.

Gordon · Joined: 28 Jan 2003 Posts: 5309 Location: Japan

Shmooj,
How much extra is the wireless add-on feature for the BB Phone? Sorry my Japanese kinda sucks, so you'll have to excuse me. Crying or Very sad

5 metres isn't very good, but wireless is great for a laptop.

shmooj · Joined: 11 Sep 2003 Posts: 1758 Location: Seoul, ROK

Seems to come out to around Y3000-Y4000 a month. I'm not really sure as I pay by credit card and it is converted into pounds for me. IT wasn't much more than the normal service. I have a laptop too and it is so convenient.

As we were talking about using the net for phone communication, one thing I should mention though is that if you are using an online phone and you are on a wireless, the line will die if there is even a tiny break in the connection. Better to plug in the cord while you are on the phone. Of course, for browsing the net, a temporary loss in signal does not matter at all. It also seemed to be fine in a two hour video chat with Windows Messenger where roaming around our apartment with a webcam was really interesting for our friends back home.

JibberJabber · Joined: 20 Nov 2003 Posts: 10 Location: Somewhere else

I've found that if you have a laptop with a 802.11G wireless card which is the faster one at 54mbps, it actually works over a much larger radius than the 11mbps 80211.B. Granted, the farther away you are the more the signal degrades and the connection can be dog slow. 802.11G does seem a lot more expensive in Japan than in the US.

In cities, I occasionally pick up people's networks on my laptop -- some people don't secure them very well. Oops.

If you really wanted to geek it up, you could build an antenna using a pringles potato chip can and some other parts -- or buy one here http://www.cantenna.com