Category: playing

Cricket USB UM100 Broadband Wireless Modem Review.

Paul6 Replies

The UM100c is No Longer Available, Please check out the Cricket [intlink id=”3059″ type=”post”]A600 Modem Review[/intlink] Or the [intlink id=”4523″ type=”post”]UM185 Broadband modem[/intlink]. The UM185 modem might be a replacement to the UM100.

After a full week of playing around with this USB wireless, I wanted to talk about it. So let’s break it down into pieces.

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  2. Installation —  The installation of the USB was not to difficult.  I did have to do some more steps than this:  Install the Software, then hooked up the USB device to the USB port.

  3. Manual Activated the Broadband —  For some reason in my area they had several people have problems with the broadband activation.  So I had to activate it manually!!

After that all went well, I was on the internet just a cruising along.  I did however wonder why I was getting such a slow response speed.  When I went traveling I thought I would share some of my local results with you to better show you my speed.  All these test were done at

my speed test around town

Please see an updated post on how to get even more speed from the broad band modem.
This speed is not the true speed for the broad band modem.

The Percentages over the results are showing you just what my signal strength was when I was doing the test.  Two of the 4 were traveling on the highway and the other two were stationary.  I also know that my speed will vary along with signal strength, I know I have to be a mile or less from a tower to get 100%.

*Update* 12/21/08

[ad#cricket-1]In my other post I talk about why I didn’t get the speed I expected, but after I did the activation I went to normal Mobile Broadband speeds.   I also now have been using the USB Modem for my main internet without any or much problems.   I know I can’t play any major online games but I can at least have the internet with me were ever  I go.   As long as you stay in the coverage area, you should be in good shape.  .  Like I Said I’ve used it in my area for over a 1 month and with the small little problem, the speed has been really dependable and I haven’t had any major issue with connectivity. I’ve been using this modem as my main internet and have not seen any major internet and have not seen any of the cap come my way.   I think they won’t mind to much as long as you don’t ABUSE the internet, for example don’t use it for bittorrent downloads and you should be fine!!

Update 12/24/2008
I also did travel with my laptop to another city, and I got to say it was really good and how it did when I went from one city to another. Check out the report here.
According to some post and forum talks around the the internet they are talking about the soft cap of 5 Gigabytes but that seems to not be so important right now.   After all, they have to make money some how.   I will update as necessary when I find anything else out.

update 1/01/09

I also did a video and uploaded it to youtube using the broadband connection. I had no problem uploading this video to Youtube. I’ve embedded it in this web page. See it on the bottom:

I also bought the [intlink id=”3059″ type=”post”]A600 Cricket modem[/intlink] and I absolutely love this modem because of the things you can do with it.

Whatever happened to that One Red Paper clip?

Paul

Kyle MacDonald: “One Red Paper Clip”

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What did happen to that One Red Paper Clip?  We know Kyle MacDonld traded that paper clip for something more valuable and sooner or later it got all the way to a house?  So he’s trying to sell this house of his.  Here’s the quote:

“We’d like to trade the house because it’s kinda sitting empty most of the time, and it’d be great if somebody was in there!” As to his barter options, MacDonald is playing his cards close to the vest. He will reveal only that he has received 300 offers so far. “I’m keeping them all a secret until I make my decision who to trade with,” he says.

[Via PC World]

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So what did happen to that Red paper clip?  I hope it didn’t get thrown away or stomped on?  Will we ever know.  I doubt it.

Fixing the Adobe Problem!!

Paul

If your have been having problems with Flash Players stoping after 2 seconds of playing.  I have a few ideas to try to get rid of the problem.  It used to happen all the time with Vista in the early days.  Here’s what I did to occasionally get the flash player to work:

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  • Cleaning out the Prefetch Directory! — Having seen this from time to time. If you have programs startup that might need to be refreshed this will refresh them so that they run like new. You occasionally can get programs that will load in a odd way and this will fix that also.

  • You want to be more anonymous? — Cleaning out your cache on your browser can sometimes fix the problem. It’s like anything else it can sometimes be corrupted.

  • Some Important programs to prevent yourself from having viruses and Malware!! — Having seen this with my own two eyes, if you have a viruses or malware on your system that too can cause problems with playback of flash media.  So just double check making sure you don’t have any viruses.

  • Adobe Flash tips and Tricks! — Also having found this out.  Adobe actually keeps the flash video on there servers cached or sometimes somewhat buffered to help with playback.  Clean the cache out at the source sometimes fixes the problem also.

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Now having used some of these tricks to get flash players to run has on occasion worked for some strange reason or another.  Although I don’t know if this will fix the 2 second playing video problem I get the feeling it should since in theory it has everything to do with cache and corruptions of the files. If you can come up with some other tips or tricks to fix the problem let me know!!