1/22/09

Wireless PC Aircard vs. Dial-up

I recently switched from a very slow dial-up connection to a much faster wireless aircard. The difference between the aircard and dial-up was like night and day.
  • Dial-up where I live only connected at 24 kb/s. The air card connects at anywhere between 100 kb/s and 2 or 3 mb/s.
  • With the aircard, I no longer have to tie up my phone line to use the internet.
  • With dial-up, large pictures were slow to load and audio and video were impossible. Now, with the aircard I can watch videos and download music.
  • I can take my aircard nearly anywhere I go. I can sit in the park with my laptop and no other connections and surf the web. If I go on vacation or on a business trip, my high-speed internet connection goes with me.
  • I no longer have to look for a coffee shop or hotel that has wifi. If I'm in range of a cell phone tower, I have internet access through my laptop and aircard.
  • When I was using dial-up, I had to be careful about sending email with large attachments because they would take forever to upload. With the aircard, large files like Power Point presentations and large Word files upload almost instantly.
So, you may ask, is there anything I preferred about dial-up over my new aircard? Yes, there is one thing.
  • Dial-up is much cheaper. It only cost me $10.00 per month through Juno (a company I used for over 10 years). The wireless aircard was $25.00 to install, and the service plan costs $60.00 per month through Alltel.