Pocket Surfer on GPRS... Fast? How

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efons

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Pocket Surfer is it really that fast on GPRS!

Well Yes. How does it work.

DataWind who have all these patents and have come up with the Pocket Surfer claim that they can load CNN.COM in like 7 seconds on a GPRS Network. (I Just opened CNN.COM on my laptop using IBurst and it took 13 seconds). Great what is the secret.

Lets start by going back to the home page and discuss this. A 500K home page could have say 20k text and lets say 100k pictures and logos etc. That is a total of 120k so where is the rest of the 380k? CODE. yep formating code for colours to use, what must go where on a page, what must flash etc etc. YOU GET THE PICTURE.

Pocket Surfer does not load the CODE.

When you type a web address on the Pocket Surfer it sends this via GPRS to DataWind Server. (This is a IBM Server on the IBM Internet Backbone). Very Secured by the way. This server will open up a web page in lighting speed. A SNAP SHOT of the page is then sent to the Pocket Surfer. A 500k page is now only 50K sent to you via GPRS. 7 SECONDS.

What also happens is the more you open up the same web page the faster it becomes, So for example we all chat on MYBROADBAND.CO.ZA the website will load faster every time we ask for it as it caches on the server thus loading FASTER.

It's amazing the speed and low count on DATA.

From My testing on a SE 610 - GPRS and a SE 600 - 3G the is very little difference.

I used the Pocket Surfer for a day and the most GPRS data I used was 4Megs (yes the PS and my Phone were on charge) cost R8. on VM R2

Pocket Surfer works wonders on VM as well.
Batter Life is 4 hours that is more than any cell phone will handle once connected to blue tooth and on line.

The idea is that the phone will die before the Surfer.

A Great Product and yes at a cost of less than R50 (200Megs) if on VM You should be able to surfer for 2 months everyday.

Great for the kids, students and with the coverage of GPRS you will be on line almost everywhere in SA - Vodacom claims 95% of SA.

Check www.pocketsurfer.co.za for all specs and where to get one.

Pocket Surfer taking GPRS to SUPER FAST SPEEDS.
:D
 
That's pretty good, but the price..... eina..... ;)

I take it you work for the company that created this thing?
 
TRUE Not TRUE

RichardP said:
Sorry... If its too good to be true, its usually NOT
Click to expand...

I have had of these for over 4 months and yes it is fast and yes my www.minimoto.co.za website now opens in 9 seconds or less.

TRUE to all the claims.

TAKE THE INTERNET TO THE NATION.

Could Pocket Surfer be the answer?

Think about that... :D

For less than R2000 and like R50 a Month you could have dedicated internet browser.
 
why not save yourself the trouble and just use Opera Mini? it uses the same technology... and guess what... its just as fast... and its FREE.
 
The big advantage is a bigger screen and keyboard.

If you want to do anything remotely serious on-line while travelling, you quickly realise how limiting a small keyboard and screen especially is.

So I think this is a great idea, the poor man's JasJar, if I can be so crude.

Also, the bigger screen and keyboard only need to come out when needed.

I don't think the price is excessive, but I'll hold on for the 800 pixel model. Or, dare I hope, the 1024 pixel jobbie!

Just a matter of time, I'm sure.....
 
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@efons - looks like you are selling it or you get cash per referal? you really have a tallent for turning a question in to a sales pitch.
 
Efons/www.pocketsurfer.co.za sells them in SA.

I've had one since end of last week and spent a few hours on it so far.

Observations:
1. Leave it in the car and use it when you need a bigger screen. No need to take phone out of pocket as it uses bluetooth.
2. 640 across makes web sites way easier to use. Most sites have navigation and adverts to the left and right and the center is usually 640 or less across, so this works well.
3. R1,600 is bit much, sub R1,000 would be perfect.
4. Starts up quickly.
5. It's basically a Terminal Server view of Internet Explorer running on their servers without borders, scrollbars, toolbars etc.
6. Only major oddity is text editing. To type text into a text field, you click it, then type (line editor style, i.e. only backspace to delete), then click the "Insert Text" button to send the text over. So passwords are in clear text on the PockerSurfer while you do this.
7. The top status bar can not be hidden. It takes about 40 vertical pixels of the 240.
8. My Nokia 6680 resets every 10-20 minutes for some reason. Maybe something to do with 3G<->GPRS switching? When the PockerSurfer disconnects and you reconnect it returns to it's home page and you have to reload whatever you were busy with.
9. The relative cheapness (no need to buy a PC or modem or get a phone line), relative ease of use (no need to learn windows), low bandwidth requirement, cell phone penetration etc makes this a very interesting solution in Africa.
10. Opera on my Nokia 6680 won't log into ABSA internet banking. This works.
11. In SA there is no subscription.
12. This is a reasonable stop gap for the next 12 months until the next generation of phones are released. I need a big (640 across) touch screen in landscape mode.
13. This device isn't for everone. Handy web browser for your car though.
14. "Full size" keyboard.
 
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Haven't timed it but it's reasonably fast. Remember it's only transferring a screen capture of the page on their server.

When you page down (there's no page down button, so you just hold down the scroll down key until it stops scrolling), it loads the next section of the screen capture. It takes a few seconds. You can scroll back up without having to wait, but down there are these pauses for each page-down.

Also it has different modes. In the default "mix" mode it first displays a low resolution version of any images within the web page and after the initial page load, shows a higher resolution version of the images. You can turn this off and load higher resolution images from the start but it does add a few seconds a screen.

Also note, it seems to dither everything to 256 colours even in high resolution mode. This is generally fine though.

Bottom line, some will hate this device and some will love it. Personally it has a place in my bag of tricks ... (I am a gadget addict).
 
biometrics said:
When you page down (there's no page down button, so you just hold down the scroll down key until it stops scrolling),

Bottom line, some will hate this device and some will love it. Personally it has a place in my bag of tricks ... (I am a gadget addict).
Click to expand...

Hi Biometrics, I'm glad you happy with the Pocket Surfer. On the scrolling side press the NUM key then you will scroll by page. (don't forget to press the NUM key again to get the mouse pointer back).

Enjoy a great product

Are you using Vodacom? or someone else. :D
 
efons: yes, i am aware of the scroll/mouse mode and I'm on Vodacom.

Update:
1. The top status bar is closer to 30 of the 240 pixels.
2. On www.myadsl.co.za I can not click on the Forum link. Nothing happens. I can reach it if I enter the url or reach it via google.
3. The page down pauses also happen when scrolling up.
 
biometrics said:
Update:
1. The top status bar is closer to 30 of the 240 pixels.
2. On www.myadsl.co.za I can not click on the Forum link. Nothing happens. I can reach it if I enter the url or reach it via google.
3. The page down pauses also happen when scrolling up.
Click to expand...

Hi Biometrics. Yes this seems to happen when GPRS is sending info on bursts. I tried the website and it worked 100% although I have had times when there were problems.

Please try it again and see if it's OK.

Pocket Surfer is also at the mercy of our GPRS Providers. :confused:
 
beyond HTML on Pocketsurfer

Hi. I read a previous posting about Datawind's remote server based architecture for processing webpages. It seems like their technology is mainly good for non-streaming content. I'm wondering ... Has anyone had any experiences loading up non-HTML based web media on a pocket surfer? How would their architecture fair on a site like YouTube for example? Would their architecture provide any speedups for flash videos? What about downloading an audio file?
 
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