By Scott Westerman
We’re pleased with our T-Mobile relationship. For most of us, there are a handful of folks that represent the bulk of our minutes and the Five Faves option gives us unlimited minutes with them. Brandon and Step are T-Mobilers so we have the mobile-to-mobile deal so we don’t pay connect time with them either. We bought the Internet anywhere package so we can surf in T-Mobile enabled WiFi sites. All in, we’re still paying less than we did with Sprint or AT&T and still get enough of those “anytime minutes” to cover our (the Queen’s) needs.
I popped for a Dash phone because I want to be able to browse the web and listen to audio streams via the included media player. It works great. But today I discovered an ultra cool feature. I can use it as a modem.
Plugging it in to my laptop with a USB cable lets me surf through my cell connection. It’s definitely not as fast as most wifi and doesn’t begin to compare with the blazing Comcast speeds, so bandwidth rich apps like Meebo and Youmail choke. My Slingbox player is choppy, but usable and throughput at Chicago Midway airport approached 128kb. Not bad. Gmail works great as does our Exchange client for work. I can also run my Bluehost control panel and Windows remote desktops with ease. When I travel, a big headache is the add-on fees some hotels charge for connectivity. That pain is gone. And The Queen can check the radar animations from the navigator’s seat when we’re on the road.
There are other devices that can do this, Blackberries are one example. But adding this to the package flexibility and attentive customer care we get from T-Mobile builds the loyalty factor big time.
