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More stuff.

04 09 06 - 22:27 (Ok, I lost this post by forgetting it wasn't fully typed and restarting my machine, quitting Safari in the process... so this post isn't as good.)

Got some new toys today - one being a new phone.

My brick of a 6210 died, so I had to get a new phone. Checked the phone shops.

First Hellstra. Talked to someone there. Their offering: Motorola V3X or Samsung something-or-other. As for the phone plan, $20/month for voice ($15 of calls), and $10/month for data (3MB). Well, that sounds reasonable.

Although, it made me suspicious something was up... "telstra" and "good deal" don't quite fit together, just like "windows" and "reliability". Turns out my suspicions were confirmed later on.

Came back the next day to get it. Turns out the salesperson didn't know what he was selling (classic telstra), and that he sold me a CDMA wireless card dataplan with the GSM phone. I asked about the possibility of getting that plan on a CDMA phone, and they said "We can't allow that". I asked if it was technically possible, and if it was their regulations that prevented it... but got no answer on that one.

Then he asked me if I was still getting it. To get a 2MB data plan (I initially was offered a 3MB), I would have to pay $15 (initially offered $10). That turns out to $7.50 per MB. According to the Telstra person, those are the kind of prices I should expect to pay for GPRS, and even more for 3G.

So, I walked over to Vodafone. They, for some reason, were completely unable to offer me a data plan above 250kb on the phone... as that's not what the average user wants. Well, I'm not the average user. I could, however, get a larger dataplan if I had the data in a data card as the main part of the plan, but this of course means I get a data card I can't use (It's a crappy Windows only one - not one of the decent ones that OS X supports), and no new phone. So much for that. And I couldn't get another plan attached to my voice phone unless I got an expensive smartphone from them... bought outright! Ouch. So much for their supposed freedom of choice.

Well, I walked into 3, expecting no better. And was I wrong! $29/month, Motorola V3x included in the plan, and $4/MB 3G data! Excellent! And it's a $120 cap, meaning I get heaps more calls than Telstra!

Comparison:

Hellstra:
$20/month voice plan. $15 worth of included calls.
$15/month data plan - GPRS only, no 3G. 2MB - $7.50 per MB.
Without a data plan - $22/MB, plus 22c session fee.

Vodafone:
$20/month voice plan, $20 worth of included calls.
$3/month data plan - GPRS only, no 3G either, 250KB - $12 per MB.
Must purchase phone outright, on top of all this!

3:
$29/month voice plan, $120 worth of included calls - cap plan.
Smallest data plan is 200MB for $29/month (~14c/MB). Without a plan, $4/MB.

Hmm, I think Telstra has the best plan here, don't you?

Anyway, the phone is great. Motorola V3x.

Only problems I see with it are:
• Strangely arraged menus (All motorola phones have this...)
• When LED light on back is on, it bleeds into the camera's image...
• Data cable, charger and headset all take up the same port on the phone, and so you can't use them at once...

Apart from these, the phone is awesome.

As for the other toy - a really decked out PowerBook G3 Pismo. 500MHZ, 512MB RAM, 60GB HDD, Combo drive.

Also has a NewerTech battery - which lasts for ages. Got 7 hours out of it today. Imagine that with 2 batteries!

We fired up a Senao NCD-2511-EXT2 in the PCMCIA slot, with a 6dbi antenna attatched to it. 130db SNR - almost twice as good a signal as my AirPort Extreme gets right next to the base station! Prism2 is an awesome chipset!

In fact, the senao does better with no antennas than the orinoco card does with it's internal one!

Now, all we need to do is find one of that particular model of Sony wireless card (It's a rebadged orinoco card, let's hope Sony didn't add some explosives somewhere inside it), and put it in the airport slot. (Full-length orinoco won't fit like in the iBook :( ).

Should make for some interesting stumbling. Especially with a 12dbi antenna on it.