whats it good for ?

S

Snowolf

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well after about 3 months of using GPRS (not 3g, not that lucky) I have finaly concluded that I am in love.
given that the speed is not high and that its a bit costly compared to the rest of the competition it is a awesom buisness tool.
I do not do masive dloads, most of my work is email based, being webmaster for a few sites and general browsing and talking cr@p with buddies.
I just got to ask a honest question, what are you guys doing with 1 gig ???
now no incriminating replies :)
I have the 250 meg package loaded and just can not finish it..... 89 hours of browsing time and that includes dloading a new kernel for linux !!!!

today we won over no. 11 to the list of people giving telkom the boot :)

Telkom, you are loosing customers.......
 
Not yet on 1Gb, but i'm quickly going that route...

I started off with 250MB , i'm now literally on 'end of the month salty megabytes' scraping through the last few days. Now Upgrading to 500MB which i think will be more comfortable for me. I generally do alot of research [lots of PDFs] and my emails generally consist of excel sheets,word docs and more PDFs. This alone is quite heavy on my usage.

Then there is the odd download [virus update, windows update, various patches and software] which can quickly take a 100MB bite out my monthly usage too.

Finallly there's some online gaming, that is about 2MB per hour (which is considered low usage for a game) If i put in an hour a day it's easily another 100MB per month.

I thought 250MB should be fine, now i think 500MB should be fine....famous last words?
 
I do a lot of mail and chatting which is really limited bandwidth. The bulk of mine is for webcam with friend in the UK and also for downloading updates and anything under 30MB because of the speed. Heavy graphics sites and my website uploads make up the rest. I do my heavy downloads on the DigiNet at work since it makes more sense and is free compared to my 3G, but won't trade my 3G for anything. Just need better coverage at home and in Sandton and I will be very happy.
 
How do you connect through GPRS, I have tried CSD but @ 9600 bps its funny. I have a Nokia 6600, infra red and BT adapter. on Vodacom topup contract. (another Q, wht speed do you get on GPRS?)

I think I'll be going to 3G in the next few weeks or so, but I just want to check GPRS for so long.

ps: I can use GPRS on my phone, I want to use it as modem for my laptop.
 
How do you connect through GPRS
Click to expand...


You will need your phone's drivers and software to use it as a modem. Usually comes with the datacable or infrared adapter. Most cases the software will set it all up automatically, all you need to do is type in the number [should be same as on your phone's GPRS setting i think] to dial and the APN [usually it's just 'internet']. Don't need uname or pword.

As for speed, slightly faster than dial-up is probably a good estimate. [5-8 kilobytes p/sec].
 
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Well 95% of my day is spent on the road on the web doing research and testing of vpn facilities and sites,so being largely external getting to access my office bound apps kills my gig in under a month....but im not complaining its paid for :)
 
I am trying really hsrd to use up the remainder of my 1 Gig before the end of this month. I'm paying for it so I better use it. :)

I just don't need the 1 Gig for what I'm doing. And this includes downloading mods and patches for games I play.


From next month I'm going down to 250Meg, hopefully. This is assuming Autopage figure out how to change my bundle. Why, oh, why did I sign up with autopage??? :(
 
NEVER USE AUTOPAGE :D

How that company is still in business, and how Vodacom have allowed them to continue selling Vodacom products I simply do not know. I had **** with them 4 years ago, and they still give customers **** to this day
 
piranha786 said:
How do you connect through GPRS, I have tried CSD but @ 9600 bps its funny. I have a Nokia 6600, infra red and BT adapter. on Vodacom topup contract. (another Q, wht speed do you get on GPRS?)

I think I'll be going to 3G in the next few weeks or so, but I just want to check GPRS for so long.

ps: I can use GPRS on my phone, I want to use it as modem for my laptop.
Click to expand...
Buy a blue tooth adapter, price range R150-R500
phone 111, enable GPRS or *111# from your cell phone
set up a dialup on you PC and select your modem as bluetooth modem
dial into *99# as the telephone number with no username and password.
connect as with any dialup

speeds range from 34kbps to 68 kb/s depends on tower and signal quality.
 
I did exactly that, just to be clear, my phone can use gprs (usually dl emails ) when I use the *99# I can see that their is a connection to my phone, but then it gives me a error, (734 - the PPP link protocol was terminated.)

any idea what I did wrong ppl?
 
I get that error too every now and then. Usually I just redial. Otherwise, reboot your phone and pc and try again. After reboot, first go to control panel, phone and modem options, modems, then select your modem and hit properties, then diagnostics and then query modem. If you get "success" and some other weird responses your phone works as a modem.
If you now still get the error when dialling GPRS, there might be a problem with GPRS in your area. Maybe then try a prepaid sim card from the other network. Its good to have around anyway as a backup.
By the way, I always dial with *99***1# on both networks.

Edit: When I started using GPRS tech support told me to use an initialisation string for the modem. I am not sure if it is more related to the handset model, but anyway, try it. Same as above, instead of going to diagnostics, go to advanced and type at+cgdcont=1,"IP","internet" for the extra initialisation.

Hope it works!
 
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ajax said:
I always dial with *99***1# on both networks.
Click to expand...

I use the plain old *99# , and set the default APN on my handset rather. Find its easier this way to swop APNs (which I do alot of).

Is your PC on XP SP2 bu the way? There were some fixes on the bluetooth side in SP2 that should help with the error messages listed above...
 
Is it Error 732?

If it is you shoud check your Dial Up Network setings that you are using the unencrypted password and not anything else.

This is a long shot but change or check that under your DUN properties window under the security tab you have set Typical(recommemened Settings) and allow unsecured password and nothing else.

Does the phone WAP? Get this sorted first. Is the SIM card provisioned for GRPS (data)?

Or try to recreate the DUN completely...

Best of luck
 
ScrnScrm said:
I use the plain old *99# , and set the default APN on my handset rather. Find its easier this way to swop APNs (which I do alot of).

Is your PC on XP SP2 bu the way? There were some fixes on the bluetooth side in SP2 that should help with the error messages listed above...
Click to expand...

I am using Win XP but with a "slipstreamed" SP2. My brother put it on for me. The slipstreamed version contains some of SP2 but not all of it.
 
ajax said:
I am using Win XP but with a "slipstreamed" SP2. My brother put it on for me. The slipstreamed version contains some of SP2 but not all of it.
Click to expand...

IMHO, I would rather not mess around with MS patches. If they say you need it, put it on. Slipstreaming patches can have disastrous affects (for example with Disk access speeds etc). Best bet would be to go to the windows update website and ask it to check what patches you are missing.

A classic example of how slipstreaming wreaked havoc was when MS released sp3 for windows 2000. SP3 disabled write back cache on raid controllers if sp2 wasnt installed in full (causing entire systems to grind to a halt for no apparent reason), and required all sorts of manual patching to get servers to perform. It ended up such a mess and was only finally (properly) fixed by a full install of sp4. Moral of the story - dont mess with service packs and updates!
 
ScrnScrm said:
IMHO, I would rather not mess around with MS patches. If they say you need it, put it on. Slipstreaming patches can have disastrous affects (for example with Disk access speeds etc). Best bet would be to go to the windows update website and ask it to check what patches you are missing.

A classic example of how slipstreaming wreaked havoc was when MS released sp3 for windows 2000. SP3 disabled write back cache on raid controllers if sp2 wasnt installed in full (causing entire systems to grind to a halt for no apparent reason), and required all sorts of manual patching to get servers to perform. It ended up such a mess and was only finally (properly) fixed by a full install of sp4. Moral of the story - dont mess with service packs and updates!
Click to expand...

I for one tend to disagree ..... patches are only as good as the build its inteeded for. I have seen this misconception do more harm than good on many occassions.......i know its no help to the question posted but my advice would be to confirm if the patch is necc at all.........
(sometimes the solution is the problem :) )
k.i.s.s
lipo
 
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