Knowledge, honesty, integrity — thanks, 3GStore!

karlyn

Hi — my name is Karlyn — and I work from home.

I used to work from Starbucks, the public library, or the most convenient parking lot with free Wi-Fi.

The Vzn field engineers swore DSL would be available at my new home, but once the phone line was installed the tune changed — there would be no DSL for me. The lines were over capacity, the equipment was too old, and so on and so forth. Forget about cable...I'm in the local WISP's dead zone...no ISDN...and no T-1 regardless of price. My only option was satellite, or so I thought. A post on dslreports intrigued me. Someone in my local area had Alltel's new EvDO service and his connection speed was far better than my 24.6 dial up (thanks djheath!).

So I googled "EVDO" — which brought me to EVDOinfo and the EVDOforums. I lurked and I read and I got more intrigued. Then one day, when my phone connection was refusing to budge beyond 14.4 kbps, off I went to the Alltel store to buy myself a data card. One problem — I could only use the card in my "classic" laptop.* I needed a router.

Searching EVDOforums didn't turn up much about using Alltel's PC5750 with the Linksys router so I dropped a note to the 3GStore sales staff and asked if they had any experience with that combination. A refreshingly honest response acknowledged that no, they had no direct experience with this particular combo, then went on to outline the possible caveats.** A suggestion was made that I ask in the forum, which I did. So given forthright 3GStore sales staff, a generous return policy, and encouragement from forum member TMayhugh, I ordered the Linksys and gave it a try. The combination is nearly perfect*** and I’m enjoying a whole new, goose-pimply Internet experience from home. And hey — I can still work in my car if I really want to — isn’t it great?!

My kudos to the 3GStore folks — for educating me via the forum and blog, for your honest sales staff, and for your fair-minded return policy. I will refer my friends to you every chance I get!
Karlyn

* Alltel came out with the USB modem a few days after I bought the PC card and router but I'd rather have the router anyway. It's much easier to get the router into a reception sweet-spot. Now all I need is that darn PCMCIA to Express Card adapter to use when I'm on the road Smile

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** I would be orphaned by Sprint/Linksys support since I'm Alltel. Oh, well, I'm not alone — I have some Sprint folks keeping me company. Smile

*** I do have Internet gateway issues similar to some Sprint users. The router gets flaky and I have to fiddle with it to get the gateway truly connected.

djheath · Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 8:24 am Post subject:

Hi Karlyn,

I'm glad my post helped out, We were on Satellite until we got the card and I'm glad we moved over to the card. My wife still wants DSL which I hope to get sometime later this year. I'm with Embarq and they are slowly adding server I'm on a Remote Terminal and they haven't added the needed hardware to it yet but they are supposed to this year. So I know your pain about DSL. I love the card and I use it in the car alot. I work from home and it's nice to use the card anywhere I want. Good luck with the router. I was thinking of using the Linksys but it was just after it came out and I didn't want to spend the money if it didn't work so instead I got the Top Global MB6000 which works well with the Alltel cards. I would have gotten the KR1 but I need to connect to a Nortel VPN for work and the KR1 isn't compatible with this VPN.

Good luck and if you have any questions you can Private message me and I'll help out if I can.
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Dave...