Treo 700p as Bluetooth, High Speed Modem

Tonight my power went out just as I had to use my computer and get on the ‘net. Pretty tough to do when the cable modem, Wifi connection and computer won’t work!

Then I remembered my week old Palm Treo 700p connected to the high speed Verizon EVDO network. I’d already set up my Powerbook and it was literally clicking once on the Internet Connect icon now in my dock, clicking “connect” and I was on the ‘net in about 20 seconds (Jason O’Grady has a nice writeup on how easy it is to setup a connection here).

Though my house sits in a slight valley and cell connections from all providers are two bars at best…I still had nearly 300kbps down and 85kbps up in speed (normal speeds in “five bar” areas via Bluetooth so far is nearly 500kbps down and 190kbps-ish up…but there aren’t Mac drivers for the apparently faster USB cabled connection so I’m forced to use Bluetooth — but the speeds are still amazing).

It was rather amusing to hear my 11 year old son say, “Is that ALL THE FASTER IT’LL GO DAD!?!” as though DSL-like speeds are slow. I tried to tell him about how cool it was years ago to buy a 56k modem, later to get the incredibly speedy 128kbps ISDN in the early 90’s, and then finally cable in 2000. He has no frame of reference and doesn’t understand why connectivity isn’t ubiquitous (and often asks why he can’t connect on the laptop while we’re in the car). THAT level of ubiquity of the internet is the expectation of our next market, by the way.