5 gig is like having a 200 minute a month cell phone

Sally · EVDO Heavy User Joined: 19 Jun 2006 Posts: 111

Sheeeesh....

This potential situation of losing my unlimited threw me onto memory lane. lol Remember when cell service didn't include free nights and weekends, etc? And you paid through the nose if you went over your minutes?

I downloaded and started using SurplusMeter on my Mac yesterday - just to see how fast 165 Meg a day goes by on my Sprint data connection.

Wow.... I'm gonna be screwed. -if Sprint changes my account.

I read up on how bad the Verizon customers were getting billed for overage data... and now that I've seen my own meter run - all I can say is: Holy schmoly! This isn't good!

Watching that meter made me feel like I went from having my unlimited cell phone and went back to the days of when I had my first Motorola flip phone. It was so cool to own that phone - but I couldn't afford to use it much! LOL

This is the exact same thing. Just having that meter running and feeling like I'm wasting money if I hit the wrong button on a web page... or feeling like I just burned up valuable transfer points when I have to refresh a page, etc....

Ohhhh... this sucks the big one.

Watching that meter brought me back to how it felt like it was to be put on hold when it was costing 50c a minute for the privilege back "in the day"!

I wonder how many people are buying these cards and signing up for service now that Sprint is only selling a 5 Gig plan?

How many suckers think that 5 Gig sounds like a lot? Just like 200 minutes sounded like a lot of cellular back in the early 90's?

jakeandbake · EVDO Newbie Joined: 04 Aug 2008 Posts: 7

I have used this card for almost and year.. and I bought a KR1 router also I bought it from a third party vendor I never signed the 2yr service contract I still have it at home.. so I essentially gave up my rebate which BTW was like a hundred bucks but I wanted some ammo when I opted out to not pay the ETF.. If they cut me off I will drop thier service like a bad habit.. how much money can sprint lose before they realize WTF is going on.... I say bag on the abusers and leave the middle men alone..

Sally · EVDO Heavy User Joined: 19 Jun 2006 Posts: 111

Well, here I am again. Month #2 of the Data Diet. Smile

My first month ended with me using about 9 gigs but Sprint thinking I used 3 more.

I'm a few days into my second month... and no word from Sprint yet. My bill still shows "unlmited"... so who knows!

Anyway... just wanted to add that I was just working along like normal today and not really thinking much of my internet connection running in the background while I have been working on Excel sheets, etc.

Then all of a sudden my automatic Apple Updater alerted me to the fact that I've got about 270 MBs of updates to install.

So for all of you fools out there that think that 5 gig is hard to hit... just keep in mind that this update alone just sucked up almost 2days worth of allowance if you're trying to stay under 165 MB a day (which shakes out to about 5 gig a month).

This still sucks.

Hoping that Sprint gets their poop in a group soon over this... or WiMax turns into a reality here.

AZDude · Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 8:23 pm Post subject:

I feel you Sally. The reason why I went with Sprint back in March instead of Verizon was because of the unlimited plan. I figured since at the time, I was going to be moving around a lot why not just get wireless internet. So I signed up with Sprint. I was happy until the 5GB limit was implemented.

While it is POSSIBLE for me to stay under 5GB, it doesn't mean it's easy. I would probably be comfortable with 20 - 30GB a month. I listen to internet radio at low quality, a few youtubes here and there. And some web browsing. And of corse updates. And a few other things. I usually stay under 5GB with my "conservative activity". Do I want to do this? HELL NO!

I (and probably many others) don't want to have to pay for two internet services to be able to use the net without worries.

I have decided to just go and surf as I please. If I go over the limit, then I go over the limit. If they cancel me, then they cancel me and I will go with someone else. Yeah, they all have the 5GB limit but they already had it before Sprint. So I would rather give my money to the other companies. Sprint should have grandfathered us in but they decided not to. That is a big insult to their customers. The other companies did, so I have more respect to them.

Sally · EVDO Heavy User Joined: 19 Jun 2006 Posts: 111

Thanks for the nice reply, AZDude...

I gotta comment on a few things you said:

1) Streaming radio: I love it. I have now stayed totally off of it for the past month or so (with the exception of testing it for a few minutes to see how much of my data allowance it sucks down the toilet - and found it to be a real pig on usage). So yeah... it sucks to not enjoy some of the internet radio shows that I appreciate.

2) Alongside of #1 is the fact that I also killed all of my podcast downloads. Miss those, too.

3) YouTube... yeah... I've done a few of those... but over the course of a month, I think I probably viewed a total of less than 2 hours worth.

4) Noticing how much it really sucks to have updates happen before I notice them. I haven't dorked with settings yet to see if there is an option for me to be notified BEFORE the update downloads. As it is now, the download happens, then the system bops me over the head to install what is already downloaded.

All in all... I agree with everything you said. But I'm still at 10 gig user and not happy that Sprint and any of the others would think that 5 gig is adequate for all business users. Some of us do a mobile business.. and heck... what ****were*** we thinking when the idea of having cellular connections would be a viable option.

My business does entail sending emails with inserted pictures... and many times, the kind of customers I have also send a reply back at me and they don't edit off my previous message. So that means I'm "paying" for that data to come back at me as well.

I'm glad there are more wifi hotspots springing up... I just have to get around to killing some of my computer time in some of these places to do any serious goofing around. Smile

AZDude · Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 10:41 pm Post subject:

Wow, that's unfortunate. Even with all of that cutting back, you still go over the limit. I agree with the streaming audio part. In fact, one of the big reasons why I want wireless internet is so that I can stream internet radio in the car. In my case I can stream with little worry since I listen at small bitrates and it what I mostly use the internet for. I listen to digitally imported and they have 24k AAC+ streams that sound almost as good as 128k streaming.

As for hotspots here is a link that lists free wifi locations. (mods, I hope its ok to post links of hotspots, if not I'm sorry)

http://www.openwifispots.com

In the end I will ask everyone this...

How many people out there use a cellphone as their primary phone connection?

I'm one of those people.

And

How is it any different than having a laptop card as your primary internet connection?

Sally · EVDO Heavy User Joined: 19 Jun 2006 Posts: 111

Cellphones have been my only phone connection since 2003. Love it.

For a while, I carried a flashed Cricket for biz and a Sprint personal phone. Still have a treo flashed for Cricket here (Cricket rocks along the front range of Colorado - $60 a month for unlimited) ... but now that Sprint has a Simply Everything plan - I'd like to go with that. The only thing holding me up is that I'm waiting to see if Sprint screws with my EVDO service.

If they do, I'm not going to be buying their phone service.

ralphthemagician · EVDO Newbie Joined: 25 Jun 2008 Posts: 9

It's more like 450 minutes.

Actually, if you do the math, at 3G speeds, you will hit the 5GB data cap with about 6 hours of downloads or any other application that can saturate your connection. Because the 5GB cap is total bandwidth, if you did something like use BitTorrent it would be good for about 4 hours.

For $60/mo that's kind of ridiculous.

Sally · EVDO Heavy User Joined: 19 Jun 2006 Posts: 111

Ralph, you missed the point.

"Memory Lane".... is back when it was majorly cool to have a Motorola big flip phone (huge battery on the back) and you paid through the nose to have it. 200 minute plans back then (guessing around 1992) were probably about $60 a month. Adjust for inflation, and that would be like paying $100 a month now - and not be able to use it much!

My analogy was about how it was to have a cell phone you couldn't really afford to use and enjoy the thing. So imagine having a 200 minute cell phone plan with no free nights & weekends... that's about what we're dealing with here with this data cap.

The big difference between the two scenarios is that the cell phone world keeps getting better and less expensive. The data cap is a huge step backwards given you can't get by a day using the internet like an average user without hitting a flash site or some streaming content of some sort.

IF we were back in BBS days (anyone else remember how cool it was to get a screaming fast 14.4 modem?) with everything black and white and no imbedded pictures or sound... 5 gig would be huge.

waynefoutz · EVDO Junkie Joined: 31 Mar 2008 Posts: 222