In Heise.de and Golem.de is going on a hot discussion about the appearing on the market of a new router model produced by Fon with the additional functions with the support of RapidShare and Youtube. I don’t want to talk about the new features, as they have already been described in details. I would like to share with my experience by using Fon to contribute the actual debates, which both forums (Heise and Golem) have inflames.
Indeed, the main discussion point is that whether it is meaningful to join because in times of cheap mobile Pseudo flatrates usage of Fon service is rather cumbersome. I would like to contradict this thesis. Firstly, if one travels abroad, he is more likely to renounce to go on-line using mobile phone. Besides you will run into the risk to get the astronomical bill for the flatrate, bacause the costs of a mobile flatrate is still really expensive. Fon, however, is free for all who opens the access for other people without payment binding.
I was in France last year and found that the Internet access wasn’t free in the hotel. The access to the Internet Hotspot ran over Vodafone and costed a lot of money. Fortunately, from my room I was able to reach not only the hotspot of Vodafone, but also a Fon hotspot. So I connected to the Internet without having to pay high fees.
The targeted search for a Fon hotspot is also not as tough as it might be thought. Fon offers to download from its website the Fonera locations as POIs for navigation devices. If you have got the intends to travel abroad, you have to download an updated list of hotspots. The search for a hotspot with the help of a navigation device is not particularly difficult.
Finally, one can say that Fon may be useful when from time to time you travel abroad.
Free Internet surfing by Fon
April 30th, 2009Change in tariff structure of BASE
January 22nd, 2009Why make it easy if it goes more complicated? At least it should be a strategy of the managers of BASE, as they developed the new fare structure. Although there are now only 3 tariffs, but these are fairly obscure. So the price is cheaper in the first year than in second and after the contract extension, it will be different. For a some fare they want to have 29 cents per text message if I have understood correctly. This is of course nonsense. During the era of discount fares with 9 cents per text message, asking of 29 cents pro SMS is simply an impertinence. I will not be surprised if BASE will announce soon a restructuring and termination of employees. They could explaint those steps with the global crisis, the real reason for the problems would be, as always, the mismanagement. Some companies have simply become so large that they are no longer able to respond quickly to changes in market situation.
Fonic – Day-flat
September 11th, 2008Since some time Fonic offers a new data tariff. It is Internet-day flat rate for only 2.50 € per day. The network of fonic supports maximal speed of HSPDA level, but after downloading of one gigabyte, the speed will be decreased to GPRS level. It is clear that not everyone will find this offer as great. I was initially not pleased with it, because I calculated 2.50 * 30 to lern a monthly charge. But this was wrong. The offer is not directed at power surfers, but to people who use mobile internet not very often, but want always be mobile. That means now you have no expensive contracts and you don’t need to search for expensive hotspots. You should by only a SIM card, either in combination with a HSDPA stick. The stick is very useful if you have a netbook. The netbook have no express card slot, so you have only the choice between HSDPA USB stick and mobile phone with bluetooth. If you already have an HSDPA-enabled phone, it will probably be the cheaper to use it, of course, if you use the Fonic card for the phone calls. Otherwise, it will be quite uncomfortable. You would be forced to constantly swap cards, with all the resulting disadvantages, such as Inaccessibility while you surf the Internet.
I am pleased with the current price trend in this segment. We waited several years to a possibility of using mobile phones to surf in the Internet. Slowly but surely we will come to this aim. Hopefully other mobile operators soon offer other such offers.
Medion Akoya mini – my new companion
July 16th, 2008I don’t know any more about where I read about Medion Akoya mini at first. I think it was an internet site, because I read about it before the official announcement was out. When I read about the details of the new netbook , it was immediately clear for me that the device is exactly what I waited so long for. I was initially skeptical because of the manufacturer. I heard a lot of negative things about computers of this manufacturer, but then I thought that it is has a 3-year warranty and more than 3 years I would not want to use it.
In addition, the market of alternatives are not very large. Although several manufacturers, such as Asus, Dell, Acer, HP and others announced devices of this class, there was only EEE PC that you could buy at the market in this time and it was already outdated. It has, in contrast to Akoya not a real hard drive, but a SSD (Solid State Disk). This SSD is very slow, it has a total capacity of 12 GB, which is not very much and it has an old Celeron M processor, not optimized for the saving of power. Medion Akoya Mini has, however, a 80 GB hard disk, a new Intel processor – Atom and 10 “display. That was enough for me to make my decision.
My choice was a Medion Akoya Mini and I wanted to have this device in any case. Finally, it was a birthday gift that I wanted to buy myself. I thought about to go to the shop one hour before the opening, but it would belittle too crazy for me. I was 15 minutes before the opening of the shop there and I was the first one. I bought a black Akoya. The color I like very well. The device itself looks expensive. Except for a few small quirks, I am satisfied with the quality. The display is very bright, Windows XP boots in less than 30 seconds, WIFI works great. Only Bluetooth was missing me at the device. This problem was also easy to solve. I bought a usb bluetooth adapter for 8 euros, which is very small and handy. Now I can use my mobile phone to surf with my Akoya Mini.
I am really satisfied with the device.
A new mobile phone
June 29th, 20081 year ago I bought my last cell phone. My Sony Ericsson W300i still works without any problem, but this mobile phone, in my opinion, simply too old. I think I’m finally ready, to invest a large sum in a mobile phone to buy a modern device with HSPDA, as well as WLAN, Bluetooth, infrared and many other useful things. Why want I actually infrared? Many people would be surprised about this request. The answer is, I want to use my mobile phone as a remote control. I could use it for controlling my TV, but also with my digital camera too. My digital camera supports an infrared remote shutter button. This is something you need when you want to make sharp pictures. Moreover, it would be quite reasonable to buy a mobile phone, which runs on Windows Mobile 6.1. It is always desirable, to chose a device with the latest version of the available on the market operating system, as it often happens that the new programs will be written only for newer operating systems. The best thing would be if I had the opportunity to buy, a mobile phone with Google Android. There are no phones with Android on the market and it is not known when some of them will be released.
My budget 400 to 500 euros.
The main requirements are:
- HSPDA
- WLAN
- Bluetooth
- Infrared
- Lower SAR
Windows Mobile 6 or 6.1
My additional requests:
- Protection against splashes, dust and dirt (IP 54)
- GPS
- QWERTY keyboard
- No or very good digital camera
Currently, I see Asus P527 and HTC s730 as a possible compromise solutions. Of course it would be great, to buy Sony Ericsson to X1. The price for SE X1 is too high. I can not understand why I need to pay 999 € for a mobile phone. Only because of Windows Mobile 6.1? I would buy HTC Diamond in this case. It is much cheaper.
Asus Eee PC with contract
May 22nd, 2008As announced at the CeBIT 2008 Asus and T-Mobile are begining a strategic partnership. EeePC by Asus will be available at T-Mobile in combination with a 2-year contract. The price will begin at 99 euro. The cheap notebook comes with UMTS / HSPDA / SHUPA / EDGE Web’n'walk stick with the pre installed drivers, so the users do not have to worry about setting up of stick under Linux. The stick supports speed of up to 7 megabits per second as long as the network coverage is available.
The name Eee PC means “Easy to Learn, Easy to Work, Easy to play.”
The EeePC is a very small and lightweight notebook. For many people it is a cheap alternative to the currently very expensive Subnotebooks. The model of the first generation has 7-inch display and has a resolution of 800×480 pixels. As processor will be used Intel’s Celeron with 630 MHz. The graphics processing takes Intel 915GML graphics chip. The user don’t have to renounce of wireless or webcam. The memory size varies from 256 megabytes to 1 gigabyte. Instead of a hard disk Asus Eee PC has the SSD (Solid State Disc). Currently it will be used only in very expensive models of notebooks. Eee PC has only 4 to 8 gigabytes. SSD consumed in contrast to conventional hard drives less energy and has a greater read and write speed. However, this advantage, will be nullfied with the energy hunger of processor.
It is certainly my opinion, but I think that it is advisible to wait with the conclusion of the contract for a few months because a new Asus Eee PC model that will be published in Europe in summer. The name of the new model is Asus Eee PC 900. It will have a much larger (8.9 inch) display. In addition, the Windows version will have 12 instead of 8-gigabyte SSD, Linux version even 20 GB. Webcam will have 1.3 instead of 0.3 megapixel resolution, but, in my opinion, it’s not so important.
Unfortunately, however, the new model will be around 100 €, more expensive than predecessors. But because of larger storage capacity and a display with 8.9 “instead of 7″ with a resolution of 1024×600 pixels, it is advisable to invest the money in the new model.
iPhone with or without UMTS in Europe
July 5th, 2007In the US the iPhone has been released without support for 3G / CDMA / UMTS. Rumors say that in Europe the iPhone will be released with UMTS support. This perfectly makes sense, since the multimedia functions will lead to a lot of over the air downloads and those can be really annoying if you don’t have a decent speed.
Choice of a new mobile phone with UMTS-support
February 1st, 2007I would like to contract with BASE and that’s why I’m thinking about a new mobile phone with UMTS-support. The choice is not big. I don’t want to buy any subsidised cell phone, I will buy it myself and my budget is not really big. Sony Ericsson W300i a good candidate for that, because it costs only € 179, and it has many useful features. But if you know a better offer, I would like to know about it too 
Flat rate from BASE
January 14th, 2007My old O2-contract expires shortly and I don’t have a wish to extend it for the next 2 years. I think about a contract with BASE with phone flat rate and UMTS flat rate.
Yes, I know, it is not a real flat rate, because I may not use VoIP, but currently it is the best offer in German market of mobile services that I know. I will use UMTS for reading of emails, icq chat and www.
The low accepting of UMTS-fees by mobile phones owners
December 8th, 2006TNS study tells us that the acceptance of mobile services and applications, based on UMTS-technology is very low.
The general reason of this result is the high costs of online services.
These results will not surprise anyone. If you take a look at price lists of your mobile provider, you will understand that the rates for GPRS and UMTS are very high. I’m really can’t understand the price politic of the mobile operators.
I can’t imagine to order 30 megabytes pack of traffic for 9.86€. If you see the details, you understand that the price-politic is much blinder than you think, for example, the timing of these packs is approximately 100 Kb and there is no any preference if you traffic for one session will be 2Kb or 100Kb, you will pay for 100Kb.
The other problem is the abuse of such terms as “flat rate” or “unlimited”. These terms will be often abused by mobile operators and internet providers, because the rates that they call as “flat rate” or “unlimited” have often many limitations.
I know only 2 mobile operators, who offers “reali” UMTS flat rate and moderate prices (E-Plus and BASE), but these prices are anyway too high for normal users and the speed of internet connection and coverage are too low.