Merlin C201 is 3 Times faster than Dialup

[Jack Rodgers]

"It won't work on a Mac" is what everyone told me about the Merlin C201 
card. But it does...

The Merlin C201 is a PC Card that acts as a cellular modem for 
connecting to Sprint on a dedicated account. Using the PC Card I can 
connect anywhere there is a Sprint cellular presence and surf the net. 
I have wanted such a card for many years and now I have one albeit with 
a problems. Hopefully Apple will dedicate some of its resources to 
making a wireless card as easy to use and trouble free as the airport 
card. Working with Merlin to perfect the card's functions would be 
appreciated.

The details are on < 
<http://www.powerpage.org/story.lasso?newsID=10220> with replies by 
dozens of people.

I ran a test on one 3 Meg file download.
Test file on Versiontracker.com: Outlook VCard 10   3 Megabytes

Airport Base Station via Dial-up using Wep and 128 bit encryption
12 minutes to download
4 Minutes per megabyte
Max KB sec 4.1 as indicated by Safari's Download window

Dial-up
Less than 12 minutes to download
Less than 4 Minutes per megabyte
Max KB sec 4.6 as indicated by Safari's Download window
Internet Connect Indicated speed of 46667 bps

Merlin C201 card in PC Card slot using Sprint Vision dedicated 
connection
4 minutes to download
+1 Minutes per megabyte
Max KB sec 12.9 as indicated by Safari's Download window
Internet Connect indicated speed of 230,400 bps

The same file on a wifi download was about 35 KBS but when I downloaded 
another file from another site it hit 150 KBS so I think Versiontracker 
may be a bit slow.

Dial-up was .5 KB second faster due to encryption and de-encryption, 
wep and so forth.

The Merlin card was more than three times faster than the dial-up 
connection and the airport/dial-up connection but 1/10th the speed of a 
good wifi connection and DSL.

Problems encountered:

Need to use PC Laptop to setup the card.

Two problems caused a delay in being able to log on:
I do not have a sprint email account and it took a bit to realize I 
should just leave that field blank in Network PPP.
The phone number is #777 and I had entered 777 with out the # sign.

When I turn off the card via the card menu or select disconnect, 10.2.4 
crashes and displays a notice that I need to restart.

Other problems were resolved by entering DNS numbeers for earthlink or 
sprint and by using authorization for Earthlink since I am dialing in 
through Sprint.

I've also run Diskwarrior and Safe Mode. All in all, the few inital 
glitches have been resolved and it just seems to be getting better and 
better.

Over the weekend I'll be in Everglades City and upload a few photos.

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Break the Rules! Use a Sprint PC Connection Card with a tiBook:
<http://www.powerpage.org/story.lasso?newsID=10220>

jackrodgers at earthlink.net
http://www.jackrodgers.com