Discover the best of the web!
Learn more about Digg by taking the tour.
MacBook Pro ExpressCard EVDO setup & review
5thirtyone.com — "Current Intel-powered Apple MacBook Pro owners share much in common. A preference for balanced computing power, OS X, and a common question concerning the tiny slot located on the left-side of their machines - what to do with an available ExpressCard slot? How about an EVDO ExpressCard?"
williamw- 486 diggs
- digg it
- TechPedia, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4about to order a few of these for work. thanks for the headsup.
- Vulc4n, on 10/12/2007, -10/+0That thing looks hideous on its own... Installing it on a MacBook makes it look even worse.
- isdereks, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Well until Apple decides to integrate high speed wireless carrier hardware into its computers, it's the only way to go (aside from tethering your 3G handset to your computer).
I envy Vaio's for their integrated EVDO / HSDPA support. - streak, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1The photo is a terrible perspective. My only complaints are that this capability isn't built-in in the first place, and typical carrying bags do not accommodate the extra width imparted by the card.
- emorphien, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@isdereks
I've always thought it would be neat to have, I think there's a Thinkpad that has it too... and may some others. Not just Sony. The unfortunate thing is the price of the service plan.
- isdereks, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Well until Apple decides to integrate high speed wireless carrier hardware into its computers, it's the only way to go (aside from tethering your 3G handset to your computer).
- emorphien, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3Most of the people i know with the MBP have no idea what the slot is, nevermind the fact that there's also an expresscard 54 size, or PCMCIA/Cardbus.
When I tell them my laptop can use all 3 they just gaze at me dumbfounded.
They could probably remove that slot and not really affect anyone because the majority of people I know using the slots on the older powerbooks used CF readers which I don't think fit in an expresscard 34 slot without using a big, ugly blob of a thing that sticks out and gets in the way. Not something you can leave in all the time, unfortunately. - streak, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Mac OS X (10.4.7 and up) provides native support for the V640. In other words, there's no need to install the VZaccess software in order to use the V640 very effectively. While VZaccess provides a few additional connection monitoring functions, this was not enough for me to leave the third party software installed.
- streak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Parallels doesn't seem to utilize the V640, but I've not really tried to coerce them to work together.
And for "gaming" or working interactively over X Windows, the ping latency times are much better for EVDO than EDGE. - thomashallock, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1That thing is freakin' huge! Just like power adapters for cigarette lighters, I simply don't understand why these devices don't come with extension cables. It's just waiting there for someone to trip over it.
- streak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2As stated above, the perspective taken in that wideangle photo does not accurately portray the small size of the V640. The card is actually rather diminutive (bordering on tiny), but it nevertheless portrudes out the side of the MBP enough that the computer won't fit in a standard 15" travel bag with the card inserted. The V640 also has a tiny antenna "wing" that can be flipped up (not shown in the photo), ostensibly for better reception.
- isdereks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I included links to the Flickrstream for a better idea of how far this card sticks out.
http://flickr.com/photos/0401/tags/expresscard/
- Jayeveryday, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Shake the haters derek Great review. Jaydon34 on flickr
- ibnabouna, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I sampled the speed of this card using a Windows laptop in a local Verizon Wireless store. The speed was unacceptably slow. I noticed that the card would speed up when a connection request was pending, but it took a very long to start processing a network request.
Perhaps it's just my area (Southern California.)- streak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Perhaps you weren't in an EVDO locality or you had power management set to "sluggish". The slower, fall-back 1xRTT service provides much lower bandwidth and higher latency, and power management features often turn cards off in between accesses. With EVDO, the speed and responsiveness are normally impressive... virtually identical to a slow DSL connection.
And of course if you buy the V640 and don't like it, Verizon has a 15 day money-back return policy, wherein you only pay the monthly fee (prorated) while you had the card.
- streak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Perhaps you weren't in an EVDO locality or you had power management set to "sluggish". The slower, fall-back 1xRTT service provides much lower bandwidth and higher latency, and power management features often turn cards off in between accesses. With EVDO, the speed and responsiveness are normally impressive... virtually identical to a slow DSL connection.
- ibnabouna, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I should also add that there are instructions out there for using the T-Mobile Blackberry 8100 ("Pearl") as a Bluetooth modem to access the EDGE network. Although EDGE is not as fast as EVDO, I found the results highly acceptable for my purposes (checking e-mail, a few web sites, and even using Microsoft Remote Desktop to log into work.)
Unlike Verizon, which charges $59.99 on top of your voice plan for laptop tethering, T-Mobile does not charge anything above the normal Blackberry service ($19.95) for this feature. That is a good reason to switch to T-Mobile if you want mobile Internet for an excellent price.- streak, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Unlike EDGE, with EVDO, tabbed browsing works quite well and it's actually practical to download the entire Sunday edition of the New York Times (e.g., with a subscription from www.newsstand.com)
- t3hX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Unlimited NationalAccess/BroadbandAccess cannot be used: (1) for uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games; (2) with server devices or with host computer applications, including, without limitation, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, telemetry applications, automated functions or any other machine-to-machine application; or (3) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections.
...
Sounds a little strict.
for uploading, downloading or streaming of movies, music or games
Looks like I'd do that.
automated functions or any other machine-to-machine application
Web browsing is a machine to machine application. And RSS feeds are probably automated. - BeachBud12, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0If anyone is interested in the new V640 express card, we have special limited promotional pricing in the market I am in. You can contact me at john.renner@hotmail.com. Shipping is FREE!
- lilzaphod, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have one of these cards for my 17" Macbook Pro.
I routinely use this card to utilize my Slingbox when I'm on the road off my bootcamp partition. I haven't come close to the 10GB transfer per month yet, and have never recieved a warning from Verizon. I have a feeling that they don't monitor packets, just throughput.
2 issues with this card- Does not work with Cisco VPN on OS X. Does work with the same VPN off of Windows XP. Parallels does not find the card correctly. This has to do with the way OS X grabs the card first, and the way Parallels wants to piggyback off of the networking.
It's great for surfing in the airport, and I can use web access for my email when I need to, but not being able to get entourage to talk directly to the exchange server kinda sucks. - boneznet01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The list of supported EV-DO cards is a bit lacking. Lots of other cards work. For example, I have a Franklin CDU-550 USB EV-DO card that is fully supported in MacOS X 10.4.7+ (Intel-only, for the pretty menu). For any MacBook users, this card works great and is available from the same place mentioned in the article. I don't think you can order it from Sprint directly. I've found it pretty much works exactly the same as this Express Card in this article says. I believe there are some EV-DO Rev.A USB cards coming out fairly soon as well.
- isdereks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Although OS X does indeed support the Franklin CDU-550, it is not an ExpressCard. It is a USB alternative. If anyone is interested, grab one for around $260 from http://www.evdoinfo.com/
Digg is coming to a city (and computer) near you! Check out all the details on our 
© Digg Inc. 2008 —
Content posted by