| reply to MRCUR
Re: Just got a Virgin Mobile card... I've been using a Virgin Mobile card for a couple months now, and I've been rather pleased.
There are several things I like about it: 1) I only paid $99 for the usb modem itself, no contract. 2) Easy to install (can even use it from Linux if I desired). 3) It's fast (average 1.2mbps down in most of town, although in larger cities the speed does drop). 4) The $20/250 megabyte plan per month is a decent price point for someone using this from his mobile netbook. I find that I use the 250 meg in around 3 weeks or so--that's driving around town listening to internet radio, using the connection to check emails, and do some server administration over ssh. At which point I just buy another $20 card and slap it on my account.
And some things that I don't like: 1) The plan doesn't scale too well: Dont bother with the $10/10day plan... and if you are going to use 1+gb per month, it gets pretty expensive. You CAN do so (just keep buying the bandwidth as you run out) but expensive. 2) You get charged for upload and download bandwidth. 3) It's fast. Really fast. You can download a 50 megabyte file in about 5 minutes... and use up the full 250 meg in under 30 minutes. 4) I get very good coverage (it's Sprint after all)--even in this 3rd world country named Arkansas where you cannot even get DSL in most of the state. Heck, I can't even get basic CABLE here. |
