Ode To My USB Broadband Connection

To many techies, road warriors, and laptop-luggers, this may seem to be an outdated subject.  I mean, mobile broadband connections have been available for quite some time, and I think that most people who have been using them for a while really take them for granted.  We'll becoming ever greedy, salivating over super 3G speeds, consuming ever mounting mass amounts of delicious data, and forgetting how truly grateful we should be that it's even possible.

For grins and giggles, let's examine how it "used to be."

The Good Old Days... Or Why My Dusty Modem Is Now A Chic Paperweight

Your screaming fast, ultra hyper upgraded 1200 baud modem was able to suck down about 1200 BITS per second.  Yeah, bits, not bytes.  For those who don't remember (or don't care) there's 8 bits in a byte.  So this translates to about 150 bytes per second.

To understand the magnitude of this, one must examine how long it would take to download a file.  One of my favorite old shareware games, Commander Keen by id software, comes in a 238 KB file.  That's 238,000 bytes.

If my math is correct... 238,000 bytes / 150 bytes per second / 60 seconds in a minute = about 26 minutes.  That's almost a half hour to download a small DOS shareware game with EGA graphics and internal speaker bleepy-bloopy sound.  Oh, and I waited... feverishly... for that old modem to spit out my prize.  Too many times did I watch the Telix screen intently, wiping drool from my youthful and chubby mug, as if staring at the green blinky lights would actually make it less boring than watching reruns of the Price is Right.

Back on track... my USB broadband card usually gets somewhere between 60-125 KB per second download speed.  That's about 83 times faster that that old modem.  So it would take about 2-3 seconds to download Commander Keen.  

Have You Hugged Your Adapter Today?

AND YOU CAN TAKE IT ANYWHERE.  That's right kids, not only do you get super fast broadband speed, but you can get it anywhere, on demand, pronto, you get the drift.  

Anyway, this isn't meant to be overly technical or too in depth.  I just want to make it known how ovrejoyed I am to be able to transport a broadband internet connection anywhere I go, whether it be in the car (not while driving, of course - I recently did work on my laptop with my broadband adapter as a passenger, and it worked great), in the airport, at the train station, at any coffeehouse without a free Wi-Fi connection, at any coffeehouse that usually has an extremely slow Wi-Fi connection, or anywhere else I can think of.

Let's make sure that as we continue to become even more attention-deficit, unable to wrench ourselves away from our always-on cellphones, PDA's, and BlackBerries, and taking the wealth of information at our fingertips for granted - that we remember what we had only a few short years ago.

And don't forget to give your mobile connection a little love... what would you do without it?

To Conclude: Why I Love My USB Broadband Card

  • Works just about anywhere.  In fact, I've never not had signal
  • Small and doesn't consume too much power
  • For the speed and versatility, $60/month isn't too bad
  • More than fast enough for blogging, surfing, and media
  • Downloading smaller files is a snap
  • Works with any device that has a USB port - PC/Mac friendly
  • Plug it in - hit connect - the magic of the Internets.  1,2,3!
  • It's nothing like the old days
  • Sprint has never disappointed - billing has been accurate, service has never been down
  • The unit itself was pretty cheap with a contract - I think $60? Whatta deal!
  • Doesn't make a sound like this
 

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