Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

In the United States, it’s unfortunately the cable companies who typically get the prize for fastest download speeds on broadband. Unfortunate still is that their service is usually the worst.

I have one connection to the telecom industry where I am constantly banging the drum to increase speed (against fierce opposition!). For our 1Meg download speed, we get charged US$49.95/month. (That’s what a lack of competition will get you.)

I just read an article this week that in the United Kingdom, the current standard is 20Meg download speeds and competitive forces are in the process of upping that to 50Meg. But what do they pay, you might ask, as everything is so expensive in England? The price for that 20Meg internet connection is about 19 pounds Sterling. For those of you not up on your currencies, that’s currently less than US$38 per month.

And who says the U.S. leads in technology?

Check your own download speed.

I just setup a new Dell D630 laptop (see full config at my laptop buying guide) for a client with the built in Verizon Wireless Broadband service.

I must say I’m very impressed. The option only cost about $100, and is completely built in. If you get the card from Verizon (or any other provider), you have to stick the card in the PC slot with an antenna sticking up.

On the traditional cards, the antenna typically gets in the way of your wrist when typing. Not so with the Dell built in Verizon option.

Setup was a snap (so simple the client did it himself). When you want to go online, just click the connect button on the software from the system tray and you are online immediately.

Speed is pretty impressive as well. I was getting 1200 down and 200 up. I’d like to see a bit more on the upload side, but I had been told to expect more like 500 - 700 on the download, so I was pretty happy overall.

The key thing to remember with an wireless broadband service like Verizon’s is security. You are wide open on the internet without the protection of a hardware firewall! Therefore, a good quality - no, a great quality software firewall.

I have recently been installing ZoneAlarm’s highly touted Internet Security Suite and been very happy with it. ZoneAlarm was one of the first companies to release a software firewall in the early days of the web (shortly after Al Gore invented it…)

The ergonomics, convenience, price and performance of this Dell laptop built in option make me give the Verizon Wireless Broadband a big thumbs up.

Just don’t forget the firewall.

I will tell anyone who will listen. Consumers want broadband with more bandwidth. DSL in the United States, with some exceptions, is falling behind. Those who think selling “up to 1 Mbps”, which usually averages only half that, for $49.95 per month are just waiting for a viable competitor to take away their business.

There are more viable competitors everyday. Europe and Asia get it. Some parts of the US get it. The rest don’t.

5 mln Europeans to connect to broadband via mobile in 2007 by ZDNet’s ZDNet Research — European mobile broadband market will reach 5 mln connections at the end of in 2007. Austria and Sweden are leading the way with hundreds of thousands of consumers signed up to affordable high-speed Turbo 3G network services delivering data rates up to 7 Mbps, Berg Insight says. The total value of the European mobile broadband [...]

That’s right, 40 Gigabits per second internet connection. Not DSL or Wireless, but Fiber Optic internet.

Where? Who? If you are guessing Bill Gates or someone other rich tech guru on the west coast of the United States, you would be wrong. Very wrong.

If you guessed a 75 year old grandmother in Stockholm, Sweden, you would be right.

Unfortunately, the United States is NOT leading the way in broadband. I wish it were.

You can read the whole story here.

Data backup on my mind again.

Here I am at a yard sale, typing on my laptop, connected to a wireless router (wirelessly) which is connected to the internet with Motorola Canopy wireless gear and an antenna on the roof of my truck. (I’m a director at the local telco and I’m trying to promote our wireless internet service.)

Things are a touch slow right now, so I thought I’d comment on the movie “Duplex” we watched last night.

Ben Stiller is working on his laptop trying to complete his book with the deadline looming. Naturally, something happens to the laptop just after he finishes the novel. He’s been working on this project for months and has not even one backup.

Wait, you’re saying, it’s just a movie. People in real life don’t do stuff that stupid. Well, you’d be wrong my friend. I’ve mentioned before the bright, ambitious college student whose hard drive crashed with her semester thesis on it - nary a backup to be found.

Thumb drives are just too cheap, too convenient, not to have multiple copies of important data.

For better data backup, check out Acronis True Image. Does a great job of picking up just important stuff if that’s all you want; does an even better job at imaging the entire drive to an external hard drive - also incredibly cheap.

Wireless is wonderful technology. Whether speaking of WiFi for local area networks or wireless broadband for internet, the technology and usefulness keeps getting better.

Nonetheless, I usually tell people that wireless is great but a cable is always better. Now, I have been a proponent of wireless since before the turn of the century (sounds weird to use that phrase, meant something totally different to me when I was growing up). In fact, I saw Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom fame - now of prison fame - deliver the keynote address at the WCA convention in New Orleans in Summer 2000. What a pompous jerk, and a poor choice for keynote speaker, but I digress.

But a recent incident with one of my clients has me rethinking the advantages a partner of mine and I were telling potential investors years ago. Wireless makes a great broadband connection, but also a fantastic backup to a wired connection.

Enter the backhoe. On a stretch of roadway so known for water main breaks it defies all logic why the city, while replacing almost all of the roadway, doesn’t go ahead and replace all of the water manes at the same time. (Job security for later?)

Thursday morning a water main breaks. Shortly thereafter a city employee, who apparently doesn’t have to call J.U.L.I.E to mark utilities before digging, cuts through a primary telephone line artery. Because my client has a fractional T-1, their internet actually has priority over the phone lines. Friday around noon, the internet comes back up. Late Friday, some phone lines are operational.

Since everything is soaked, the repairs take longer and their are spotty problems at least through Monday night. Tuesday morning and now everything appears back to normal. If they had Wireless broadband, possibly with VoIP phones? Only the bathrooms would have been out of service.