Motorola Q with EVDO for laptop

chong67 · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 12 Jun 2006 Posts: 23

I am thinking of getting a combination PDA phone and evdo capability for my laptop.

I know a EVDO PC card is better because you get faster speed.

But I sometime want to use a PDA phone and sometime surf on my laptop with the phone acting as a modem.

1. I think the Motorola Q can do both of these jobs right?

2. I can get 450 min call and unlimited data for $65 with company discount. Is this a good price or Sprint got better pricing?

3. When my phone act as a modem, is it wireless connected to my laptop or thru a USB?

Thanks for any info you can give me.

NEdually · EVDO User Joined: 10 Mar 2006 Posts: 28

"I know a EVDO PC card is better because you get faster speed"

I thought the speeds of a USB phone and a pc card are the same???

Only the external antenna etc makes a difference?

chong67 · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 12 Jun 2006 Posts: 23

I read somewhere that this person use the Q and was gettin 200-400 kbps download.

With a pc card, you can get 600 kbps on average.

I dont have the Q yet. So I can plug the Q to the USB and get wireless internet huh?

rcw3 · EVDO User Joined: 29 Apr 2005 Posts: 47

Actually, I thought a card was only faster if you were using the phone via bluetooth (which should be corrected to some extent with USB 2.0 + EDR). A USB connected phone should be fairly comparable I would think.

chong67 · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 12 Jun 2006 Posts: 23

I am getting between 300 to 650 kbps download and around 100 kbps upload with my Q.

How is this speed compared to the real PC card?

fletch33 · EVDO Newbie Joined: 10 May 2006 Posts: 9

i got rid of my pc card data plan when i got my Q because i found almost no difference in the speed from my kpc-650 and my Q. in fact i didnt see much difference in speed from my data card and my moto e815 standard phone.

hope that helps.

xenophon · EVDO Addict Joined: 30 Aug 2005 Posts: 2004

The advantage of card vs. tethering phone is that you can talk on phone while using data card. Phone tethering doesn't allow simultaneous voice/data.

Performance is generally the same. It is possible to get well over 1Mbps on a data card while less likely phone tethering, but most don't get over 1Mbps anyway, so they are really about the same.

If you're not a heavy user, tethering works fine. But it is very convenient to have a data card almost always on. Since Verizon is officially ~$60/month to tether with data plan, it may make sense to just get the data card if using daily.

fletch33 · EVDO Newbie Joined: 10 May 2006 Posts: 9

i agree for some people you are correct. however i pay $45/month for unlimited data plan for my Q and i am not gonna pay another $60/month for additional internet connection when i dont need it everyday since i am usually near a wifi spot for my pc or i am able to do what i need to do with my Q and dont always need my laptop to get things done.

i also have no plans of paying verizon the additional $!5/month to use my Q as a modem when i can do it for free.

if i where someone that could not get by when needed with just the Q access, and always needed to be on my pc, and for some strange reason found myself always in places where there wasnt wifi, and i needed my phone to talk the whole time i was online then i would go back to having both.

man that was the definition of a run-on sentence Very Happy

xenophon · EVDO Addict Joined: 30 Aug 2005 Posts: 2004

^Good point. If paying $45/month for internal data use anyway, getting the data card is much more pricey. On the Sprint side, it's only $15/month for internal data on PDAs so getting a dedicated data card is not as pricey.

knarfster · EVDO Newbie Joined: 21 Aug 2006 Posts: 1

Fletch,

how are you using the Mortorola Q as a tethered modem? is there any trick? I just got off the phone with verizon and they say the Motorola Q does not tether (yet). I had an e815, then got a blackberry 7250 (used on ebay) with the unlimited PDA data and the extra $15 a month for the tether, which is working great, but I really want a Q.

Thanks

deadcell · EVDO Newbie Joined: 22 Aug 2006 Posts: 4

knarfster, check out this post on qusers.com for more info on USB native tethering:

http://www.qusers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1274

Also, I think the upcoming software update from Motorola for the Q enables USB tethering?

zxcvb531 · EVDO Newbie Joined: 05 Oct 2006 Posts: 7

sotware update allows Q to be used as modem plus data plan and $15 for modem p[akage includes usb cable