Sprint overdrive 4g vs MIFI for personal hotspot

[EARL97850]

Those hotels that offer the free wifi are going by the wayside. Before too long there will be a fee associated with the wifi at all hotels except the most expensive ones.

Cya

My personal experience is the complete opposite of that. We used to always have to pay to get access and now free wifi is quite common.

Is the wifi limited to the lobby area, or just a little bit larger?

One other fact that I don't think has been mentioned is the security factor.

If you use the hotel wifi vs your own personal wifi anyone can hack into your info streaming over the airwaves.

Cya

 

[Rasputina]

Only once was it in the lobby only and that was 4 years ago. I've had free access at every hotel I've stayed at over the last 5 years or so. But I do purposely choose hotels that have access and I don't stay at motel 6. Not to do stay at the Marriott though, well one time I did.

 

[stever]

Personally, I think is the other way around. Wifi is becoming more mainstream that offering free wifi is way of attracting business to people.

Exactly.

And NOT supplying wifi, brands you as a business that does not offer services that the others offer.

So not supplying wifi, encourages customers to go elsewhere.

I don't think we are going that direction.
.

 

[arshield]

My experience is that the cheaper the hotel the more likely it is to be free. I travel a fair bit to Chicago where my office is. And if I stay downtown at a nice hotel it is never free, if I stay at a smaller cheaper hotel in the suburbs it is almost always free.

I went with a 4g wireless hotspot through Clear. I live in Atlanta and travel a lot to Chicago, both have good 4G coverage so I didn't get the dual 3G/4G device because it is an extra $15 a month. Switching my home internet to clear and getting a mobile device was $12 a month more than my comcast cable internet. It is not as fast, but it is still connecting at about 3-4 MB a second download. The upload ranges from 450-900K upload so that is the main weakness.

 

[EARL97850]

My experience is that the cheaper the hotel the more likely it is to be free. I travel a fair bit to Chicago where my office is. And if I stay downtown at a nice hotel it is never free, if I stay at a smaller cheaper hotel in the suburbs it is almost always free.


This was the point I was trying to make, but wasn't very good at it.

Thank you!!!

Cya

 

[iVan]

I'm thinking about getting one of these. I like the fact that it's not device specific so I can just use it with whatever I device I need to carry that day. The only drawback is battery life from what I can tell. I'm thinking more for out of town travel than daily needs.

Has anyone tried both? Looking for the pros and cons of each. Sprint has faster speed, they do have 4g where I am now. And they seem to have a better fee structure. I don't like verizon's data limits. I haven't been able to find out if I pay full price if I can get it without a contract and turn it on and off at will as needed.

I think having a separate device (and contract/fee) would suck. Why not get a phone that can do wifi tethering?

I don't use a cellphone more than 5 mins a month but I can use this though...

 

[EARL97850]

My experience is that the cheaper the hotel the more likely it is to be free. I travel a fair bit to Chicago where my office is. And if I stay downtown at a nice hotel it is never free, if I stay at a smaller cheaper hotel in the suburbs it is almost always free.

I went with a 4g wireless hotspot through Clear. I live in Atlanta and travel a lot to Chicago, both have good 4G coverage so I didn't get the dual 3G/4G device because it is an extra $15 a month. Switching my home internet to clear and getting a mobile device was $12 a month more than my comcast cable internet. It is not as fast, but it is still connecting at about 3-4 MB a second download. The upload ranges from 450-900K upload so that is the main weakness.

My experience is that the cheaper the hotel the more likely it is to be free. I travel a fair bit to Chicago where my office is. And if I stay downtown at a nice hotel it is never free, if I stay at a smaller cheaper hotel in the suburbs it is almost always free.


This was the point I was trying to make, but wasn't very good at it.

Thank you!!!

Cya

I'm thinking about getting one of these. I like the fact that it's not device specific so I can just use it with whatever I device I need to carry that day. The only drawback is battery life from what I can tell. I'm thinking more for out of town travel than daily needs.

Has anyone tried both? Looking for the pros and cons of each. Sprint has faster speed, they do have 4g where I am now. And they seem to have a better fee structure. I don't like verizon's data limits. I haven't been able to find out if I pay full price if I can get it without a contract and turn it on and off at will as needed.

I think having a separate device (and contract/fee) would suck. Why not get a phone that can do wifi tethering?

I don't use a cellphone more than 5 mins a month but I can use this though...

5 mins. a month?

Wow...that is almost to the point where you don't even need the cell phone at all.

Cya

 

[woodyp]

I recently got the Sprint overdrive for the ipad wifi. Here in the DC area, we "unofficially" have 4G available in spots. I have ran speed tests including the app that you can download on the ipad and consistently get around 4 to 5 mbps vs 800k - 1.1 mbps on the 3G side of Sprint. It works great and i love the fact that I can stream netflix movies with no issues or lag. Also there is no data cap on the 4G side, but there is a 5gig cap on the 3G side, which makes no sense. I verify this from time to time by checking my data usage with Sprint and it has not changed significantly from the previous time that I checked. This is due to the overdrive kicking over to 3G in the areas that do not have 4G up and running yet.

 

[Isaac Newton]

I think having a separate device (and contract/fee) would suck. Why not get a phone that can do wifi tethering?

Exactly what I plan doing as soon as Sprint announces when the 4G HTC EVO4 drops this summer!