vB Easy Archive - PDA/Smartphone tethering

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PDA/Smartphone tethering
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Posted by: Eagle117

How are the speeds when tethering a current PDA/Smartphone to a laptop? Are they much slower than having a dedicated PCMCIA card just for cellular Internet connectivity?

We are planning on purchasing phones for the IT department and the IT Director wants to get a PCMCIA wireless card to pass around to whoever is on call so they can jump in on their laptop. In the past, these cards were faster than tethering but I have a feeling times have changed.

We are looking at getting a mix of HP hw6925, Treo 750v, and 3125 phones. Will all of these tether and if so, will they be too slow to use a VPN connection to work assuming we only have EDGE connectivity? (UMTS may be available but I'm not counting on it)

Posted by: asdrew

I was using my Cingular 6515 with Edge tethered for about a month when I moved, and it was about twice as fast as dialup. OK for many things, too slow for others, but better than no access.

Posted by: goestoeleven

I've got both a UMTS/HSDPA PC Card and a UMTS/HSDPA phone. So far I haven't seen much difference when tethering via USB (probably worth doing a semi-official benchmark).

The phone is definitely slower if tethered with Bluetooth (a limitation of that technology)

The PC Card is definitely more convenient, and for the "shared device" scenario you described probably still the best bet.

Even so, I suspect I'll be dropping it soon...

Posted by: goestoeleven

Well, I went ahead and ran the test... See this link:

http://www.howardforums.com/showthr...557#post7861557

Bottom line: there is no difference in performance between PC Card and Tethered USB, but Tethered Bluetooth is much slower (no surprise there).

Posted by: Eagle117

Quote:

Originally Posted by goestoeleven

The PC Card is definitely more convenient, and for the "shared device" scenario you described probably still the best bet.

Well, we plan on everyone in IT having a data plan on their phone anyway so I just see the PC card as another device to carry around since I'm already carrying my phone if it works.

Now if Cingular would just release a phone that I actually want...