Surprise

May of last year, I decided to buy myself a new Dell laptop. I couldn't extend the warranty anymore on the Dell laptop I owned and, I was concerned that it would eventually kick the bucket and possibly cost me a number of files I wanted to keep. When I received my laptop, I found out the Dell salesperson was mistaken about me being able to use my old Sprint cellular modem. It wouldn't fit into the card slot the laptop has as its made for cards with 28 pins and my card has 54. I looked into the various cellular modems Sprint offered and the U300 stood out. It was their latest and greatest. It was the wave of the future and offered the technology that Sprint would be going to eventually. I liked that as that meant I wouldn't have to buy another modem in the future. The biggest plus for the U300 was it offered WiFi like connection speeds in markets where the Sprint cellular system had been upgraded. The sounded really cool and, the modem uses a USB port. I decided to buy it.

Once I received the modem, I promptly installed the software as the manual said. It was then that I ran into problems. There was clearly some kind of problem. I contacted Sprint and, they tried to help me solve the connection problem with the new modem. I ended up going to the Sprint store in Laurel where they tried to help me to no avail. It turned out the WiFi like technology in the modem had a major conflict with the WiFi technology in my laptop. The conflict was preventing the modem from connecting to the Internet.

My old laptop didn't come with WiFi. When WiFi became more widely available, I decided to try it and bought a card that would enable me to connect to it. The necessary software came with the card and, both worked really well. I was seriously impressed with the connection speeds I was able to get. It turned out the fact my old laptop didn't have WiFi built in was a blessing as I was able to uninstall the software enabling my new U300 modem to work. Unfortunately, the WiFi was built-in on my laptop. I decided to keep on using the old laptop and figured I'd take the modem and new laptop to Best Buy's computer wizards sometime and get them to fix the problem. I suspected they would have to disable the built-in WiFi.

Around Christmas 2009, Sprint came out with a major upgrade for the U300 software. I downloaded the software to disc which turned out to be a very good move. I hadn't taken my laptop to Best Buy yet and, I planned to install the upgrade on my laptop though I didn't think the upgrade would make any difference so I didn't install it immediately. Forward to this month, my trip to Ireland is coming up and, the trip would be an excellent time to take the new laptop and modem to Best Buy to get them to fix the problem. Why? Because I won't be able to access the Internet on my laptop there so I'll be leaving it behind. I figured 2 weeks would be plenty of time for them to fix the problem. In anticipation of taking the laptop to Best Buy, I installed the upgrade. To my total surprise, my new (now 1 year old) laptop promptly connected to the Internet! Apparently, Sprint did find a way to make the WiFi technology in their new modem compatible with existing WiFi. The upgrade gives the U300 user the choice of connecting to a WiFi network or connecting to Sprint's network. It even locates the closest WiFi signals and shows how strong their coming in so the user can presumably pick the best WiFi signal. I hope to test the WiFi part of the software some time. I remember Serotonin saying Panera offers free WiFi access. I've been meaning to try out one of their restaurants and, that would give me a chance to see how well the WiFi works. We'll see on that. For now, I'm finally getting to use my super duper speed machine laptop and access the Internet. It may be just in time too as my old laptop is showing signs that it may be going just as I feared it would. Cheers all!