U720: How to show WWAN drop down menu in Mac OS 10.5?

KImholte · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 13 Feb 2008 Posts: 23

I recently purchased a new Mac Pro and have been having some issues with my Novatel U720 USB device. I first had it automatically setup when I inserted the device but noticed continually high latency which I didn't have on my previous Mac (PowerPC G5 tower.)

So I went to Sprint's site and downloaded the drivers package and followed their directions. Everything seems to be working better now except I no longer have the WWAN drop down on my menu bar in the upper right corner. I found that to be quite helpful so I knew which network I was on and what my RSSI was.

After searching this forum and Google I could not find a way to make this show. Any ideas?

ookees · EVDO Newbie Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 4

well that's weird, the mac pro is an intel machine and 10.5 has support for the wwan icon in the menubar. I just recently hooked my u720 to an intel mac mini and the wwan icon showed up. But I personally own a PowerBook G4 and it doesn't show the icon on power pc machines.

Also u dont have to use sprints drivers for the u720 10.5 supports it out of the box.

KImholte · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 13 Feb 2008 Posts: 23

The reason I decided to try the Sprint drivers is because I was getting noticeably worse connection through Leopard (after the auto setup when connecting device) than I did in Tiger on my old machine.

Sprint now has a Leopard specific install as well so I followed that. Early tests show improvement besides not seeing the menu bar icon.

KImholte · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 13 Feb 2008 Posts: 23

Very strange, but the WWAN menu bar just appeared yesterday when I turned on my computer. I had tried restarting previously but it didn't show up until this time.

Quirky bugs are always fun Rolling Eyes

Andreas Wacker · EVDO Newbie Joined: 01 Feb 2007 Posts: 3

same here:

OS X 10.5.2 works well with u720 & sprint.

Just that the menu items dissapears. So to reconnect
I have to go into System Preferences -> Network.

Launching and quitting the Sprint Activation Utlity brings the
menu bar icon back. But I did not find a way to make it 'stick'.

It is pretty, it is helpful, I would like to keep it up there.

GPS precission is not bad, btw.