Broadband2Go Ovation MC760 USB - mini review

Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 05/13/2011 - 23:43

http://www.howardforums.com/showthre...%29?p=14395625

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Bought it today after being 'grossly irritated' by T-Mobile's billing and other silly issues surrounding their latest 4G Mobile Hotspot device.

Intended to replace 56Kb modem at home for user that does only light website surfing (little video, no mp3, etc.).

Walmart had them at $79 + $20 refill card.

Went home, took about 10-15 minutes after plugging it into Windows 7 PC to get it installed.

Had to open file manager and double-click install.exe on the USB stick to run the install program first to get their Connection Manager installed along with device drivers, then led through their web site's device activation pages to get the phone number assigned to this device.

Closed connection, then opened up the registration page to enter personal info, billing preference (credit or pre-paid cards), and month-to-month plan desired.

YES. The Walmart 1GB/month for $20 was listed among the 3 choices!
YES. The Walmart 1GB/month for $20 was listed among the 3 choices!
YES. The Walmart 1GB/month for $20 was listed among the 3 choices!
On 5/13/2011, both their initial registration web page and phone call to customer service VERIFIED the Walmart 1GB/month for $20 plan EXISTS.

(despite the 1-2 people posting that it doesn't - it's merely not listed anywhere except in-store at Walmart ONLY. Not on VM's website, not on their handouts, not anywhere else except in-store WALMART. Or call a nice service rep and she'll tell you it exists prior to purchase.)

Entered a pre-paid card #, then back to the same home page to pick the 1GB plan ONCE AGAIN. (Yes, it's crazy, but you click 1GB plan, get taken to enter the pre-paid card #, then back to click the 1GB plan and finally, apply the $20 in your account to the plan.)

In any case, easy enough and it works.

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For comparison, Engadget loads up ~16 seconds on T-Mobile 4G, ~21 seconds on VM, and ~56 seconds on a Bluetooth-tethered Nuron.

The 1 noticable difference browsing even simple, mostly text pages is the latency!

VM has 125-149ms, T-Mobile Hotspot had 201-417ms. As a result, the page-to-page loading times 'feels' snappier. The page and images load very fast and almost right away on VM; the page and images load quicker, but only appear towards the end of the page load on T-Mobile due to latency differences. Download is obviously faster on T-Mobile since it's on 4G (75-80KB/sec vs. 50-75KB/Sec 3G VM on EVDO A, but keep in mind T-Mobile was not running full bars inside the home, nor the competitor. T-Mobile 4G out in the open or near a tower is clearly light years faster.)

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Thus far, after a few hours of surfing, everything is resonably snappy and loads up quick enough for non-wired use. Yahoo, Engadget, etc. all load up w/o too much delay, and feels fast enough going page-to-page and all that there's never any 'annoyingly long lag'.

Keep in mind you're surfing at 50-75KB/sec continuous download speeds, so it's not rocket FIOS, and forget about huge MP3/Video/etc. downloads since this device and service was never intended for all that. For the basic home user that just surf the net, check emails, light video viewing, and home shopping, more than fast enough to get all that done w/o a fret.

No worries about EVDO A losing lock either since I've always been in a solid Sprint connection area. Solid 3 out of 4 EVDO bars after hours of use today and not a drop, pause, etc. yet.

Will continue to test for the 1st month and post more feedback later.