'BB' 3G on the MacBook Air

[dhilipkumar]

'BB' 3G on the MacBook Air

In the interest of achieving faster 3G on my Apple MacBook Air while getting more bang from my BlackBerry, I've found two paths to 3G Nirvana. Well, maybe not quite Nirvana.

My first foray into 3G on the MacBook Air via a BlackBerry Storm produced satisfactory results. Here, the Blackberry served as a 3G modem via Bluetooth. The Bluetooth bottleneck, however, can be frustrating (it's closer to 2G than 3G) when there is a need for speed. So, I turned to a physically tethered connection via USB.

Let me preface this by explaining why I resisted a tethered (wired) USB connection at first. Quite simply, the idea of plugging and unplugging a clunky USB cable, dealing with the VZAccess Manager (Verizon) software, and then finding a place to put the Storm (if I wasn't sitting near a flat surface) seemed like too much overhead.

Not only that. Verizon doesn't make this easy. To date, there is no documented support or software for doing USB BlackBerry 3G on a MacBook. In short, you have to use a version of the VZAccess Manager that is specified for a Motorola smartphone.

That said, it was relatively painless to set up and connect (it took maybe 15 minutes). And the best news is that this is truly a 3G connection: even the most ad-laden, multimedia-intensive Web pages loaded comparatively quickly--which is not the case with Bluetooth.

And, as I pointed out in a previous post, an external 3G phone/modem is a movable 3G feast. I can use the BlackBerry with any laptop as long as it has Bluetooth or a USB port (which is virtually every laptop on the market).
Internal 3G modems, on the other hand, are wedded to one computer and one computer only. Each computer requires a separate subscription and another $60 (more or less) per month.

There's the USB "stick" modem option, of course. I can't address that because I've never tried it. The way I see it is: use the existing 3G on your mobile phone. It's cheaper than the dedicated USB modem: on Verizon, about $30 per month for tethering versus $60 for a dedicated modem.
Or if that option doesn't appeal to you, opt for a laptop with an internal 3G modem option.

Which brings me to Apple's dearth of (as in zero) offerings in this department. Even with the ostensible advantage of an external modem described above, I would still prefer a built-in 3G modem option on the MacBook Air. Apple take note: there's a modem technology from Qualcomm called Gobi that doesn't tie the user to a single service provider. Users can choose between Verizon or AT&T or another provider. This could, at the very least, be offered as an option on a high-end version of a future MacBook

Brooke Crothers
cnet