Cool Tech Reviews

Verizon Wireless was the first to announce a $99.99 unlimited voice plan followed by AT&T and T-Mobile, and now Sprint aims to undercut them all:

Sprint Nextel upped the ante in the $99.99 all-you-can-eat rate plan battle Thursday by introducing a service that includes unlimited voice as well as unlimited data and slew of premium services.

Called “Simply Everything,” the plan will give customers unlimited voice as well as unlimited data, text, e-mail, Web-surfing, Sprint TV, Sprint Music, GPS Navigation, and push-to-talk service for $99.99 a month. The company made the announcement during its fourth-quarter earnings call, in which the company also announced heavy financial and customer losses.

The new pricing plan is available to existing and new customers on both Sprint’s CDMA network as well as its Nextel iDEN network starting on Friday. Current customers will not have to renew or extend their contract to switch to the service.

Family pricing is $5 off on the second Simply Everything line, $10 off on the third and so on up to five lines. So how does it stack up compared to the competition?

Clearly Sprint’s offering offers customers the most bang for the buck. But some analysts have warned that if Sprint significantly undercut or added more services to the bundle for the same price that they could start a price war in wireless.

That may be bad news for the carriers, but customers won’t be complaining. There’s more in Sprint’s press release, but one worry with all this low price goodness is that Sprint’s poor financial condition will be exacerbated by the price war and throw a real crimp into WiMax deployment.

Earlier in the year we covered Sprint Nextel’s push (in the USA) to take on the telco DSL providers with high speed wireless starting with EV-DO, but that was always just the first step. Now Sprint Nextel, not satisfied with just 3G (third-generation) mobile data, will roll out a faster 4G network using WiMax later this year:

The network, which will start to be rolled out by the fourth quarter and reach as many as 100 million people around the U.S. by the end of next year, will offer downstream speeds of 2Mbps to 4Mbps, Sprint said Tuesday. Combined with fast uplinks, WiMax will offer enough bandwidth for mobile videoconferencing, transfers of large enterprise files and other applications, executives said.

Partners Intel, Motorola, and Samsung Electronics plan to help by equipping notebook PCs and a variety of mobile devices to use the 4G network.

Sprint Nextel is the third-largest U.S. mobile operator. Its choice of WiMax is the first endorsement of the metropolitan-area wireless data system by a major U.S. carrier. Sprint holds licenses around the country for radio spectrum in the 2.5GHz band and had considered other 4G technologies. The carrier said it chose WiMax because it believes it could build an ecosystem of equipment makers around the technology, which is based on the IEEE 802.16e standard.

The 4G service will complement Sprint Nextel’s 3G EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) services, executives said at a New York press conference, monitored via webcast. The carrier is already offering video, music and other multimedia services on 3G, but that technology doesn’t deliver the economics Sprint needs, said Barry West, Sprint chief technology officer and president of Sprint’s newly formed 4G business unit. The WiMax network can deliver four times the throughput at one-tenth the cost of 3G, he said.

Pricing of 4G services will easily meet Sprint Nextel’s frequently stated goal of offering customers 1GB of data per month for less than US$20, West said. “We are significantly south of that,” he said.

The speed is great, but $20 per GB seems a bit pricey to me. Maybe that’s just the first GB and subsequent ones are much cheaper? They’re competing with fixed price “all you can eat” services like DSL to fixed locations or mobile services like their own EV-DO offering and can only charge so much for speed before customers will choose the lower speed option as “good enough.” And yes, prices will undoubtedly drop with time.

Marguerite Reardon at ZDNet:

Sprint Nextel is preparing to take on the big phone companies in the broadband market.

The assault on DSL is coming quietly, but recent announcements and development in Sprint’s technology indicate that the company believes it can be the third pipe into the home–a pipe that would challenge the phone companies’ DSL service and perhaps would rival even faster-than-DSL cable-modem service.

On Tuesday, Linksys, a division of Cisco Systems, announced the Wireless-G Router for Mobile Broadband (WRT54G3G-NA), which allows Sprint mobile broadband customers to plug their broadband card, used to connect their laptops wirelessly, into the PC Card slot on the router. The EV-DO mobile broadband connection is then turned into a shared 802.11g Wi-Fi connection. The companies are showing off the new router at the CTIA Wireless 2006 trade show here this week.

Initially, Sprint and Linksys are marketing the product to businesses that require network connections in areas where wired broadband access is not readily accessible, such as construction sites, special events, offsite consulting, and at events focused on public safety. But Sprint admits the product may appeal to consumers and could be viewed as a harbinger for much larger ambitions, especially as the mobile operator deploys a faster version of its wireless broadband called EV-DO Revision A, which will be available in early 2007.

Ah, but the data rate and price are the deal makers or killers for home or regular office use. See this PC Magazine EV-DO review:

Sprint’s prices have come down, too. The company charges existing voice subscribers a maximum of $59.99 a month; data-only customers pay up to $79.99 for unlimited use. That’s the same as Verizon’s price, and at press time, Sprint was giving away free PC Cards with a two-year signup. Sprint also sells a 40MB bucket plan for $40 per month that scales up to a maximum of $79.99 per month as you use more data.

The price isn’t out of whack although obviously more attractive for current Sprint mobile subscribers. The free PC Card offer is here.

In recent tests in Washington, Baltimore, and New York using the Novatel S620 PC Card Novatel S620 PC Card, Sprint’s network blazed. We got average downlink speeds of 821 Kbps over 26 file transfers, with one test peaking at 1.14 Mbps. Upload speeds averaged 136 Kbps. That’s in line with our earlier August results in Hartford, Connecticut, and Newark, New Jersey, where we got an average of 772 Kbps downlink and 134 Kbps up.

And back to the ZDNet article:

Today, average EV-DO speeds are slightly slower than the lowest tiers of DSL broadband service. EV-DO Revision Zero, the current version of technology, provides downloads between 400 kilobits per second and 700kbps with upload speeds of about 50kbps to 70kbps. The new version of the technology, EV-DO Revision A, is likely to offer average speeds between 450kbps to 800kbps for downloads and 70kbps to 144kbps for uploads. These speeds are comparable to Verizon’s lowest-speed DSL option, which offers 769kbps downloads and 128kbps uploads.

It looks like the PC Magazine tests are beating the nominal rates, but still it’s just OK compared to DSL. Another big consideration is coverage - the speed will be real slow outside Sprint’s coverage area. Sprint’s coverage maps are here. But that raises another point - how sensitive is this router to placement inside a house? It’s not like a mobile phone or even a laptop that can be expected to be moved around. Since the router is completely wireless, it can go anywhere there is a power plug, but somehow I envision a customer wandering around trying to balance Wi-Fi and EV-DO reception, presuming there is good EV-DO reception anywhere inside a particular structure. I doubt it is hardened enough to go in the average residential attic and certainly not outdoors.

It’s too early for any real tire-kicking reports on the WRT54G3G-NA (although there are some for its cousins for other types of wireless networks outside the USA), but I’d suggest waiting unless you can’t get a DSL or cable broadband connection and basically have nothing to lose. There’s hope for the future though - again from the ZDNet article:

But EV-DO is only the beginning for Sprint in the mobile broadband arena. The company is looking to its large holding in the 2.5GHz frequency band to provide new 4G wireless services. Sprint is still testing several technologies, but a front runner in the race is WiMax, which supports peak data download speeds of about 20 megabits per second, with average user data rates between 1mbps and 4mbps. The company will start offering 4G wireless services sometime in 2009, Tishgart said.

Now they’re talking!

Update 4/13: A press release for the WRT54G3G-NA finally showed up on the Linksys web site with more details including availability:

The Linksys Wireless-G Router for Mobile Broadband (WRT54G3G) is scheduled to be available this summer through distribution channels and select mobile broadband providers in North America for an estimated street price of $199. A Mobile Broadband connection PC card and mobile broadband service is sold separately.

David Pogue reviews Sprint’s newly announced Music Store in the NY Times and it isn’t pretty:

Don’t look now, but one longstanding member of the Someday Club has just become a reality, more or less: anytime, anywhere wireless downloading of favorite songs for instantaneous listening - no computer necessary.

This remarkable service is brought to you by Sprint. It’s the first cellular carrier to unveil a phone-based online music store; the others have similar plans. Their logic goes like this: “Those crazy kids have bought 30 million iPods and a billion songs from online music stores. They also spend nearly $5 billion a year on downloadable ring tones. What if we could combine those two trends? If teenagers could download full-length songs right onto their cellphones - we’ll be rich, I tell you! Rich!”

Well, maybe. As usual, the devil is in the details.

And at this point things start going downhill.

After buying the expensive phone, the expensive Internet service and the expensive memory card, there’s one more surprise: the expensive songs. You get five freebies for starters. After that, Sprint music store songs cost $2.50 apiece, plus tax.

What are they, nuts?

Unless they’ve just spent four years in a sensory-deprivation tank, surely Sprint’s executives know that the iTunes Music Store and its rivals have solidly established the sweet spot of customer acceptance at $1 a song. What makes Sprint think it can charge two and a half times as much and still make people happy?

“It’s a new market, the first service of its kind, serving a different type of customer,” Jackie Bostick, a Sprint spokeswoman, said. “We are not necessarily going after people who are downloading tons of music online.” (Translation: “Please don’t bring up the iTunes thing.”)

As Michael Gartenberg observes:

Or of course, consumers could just get the free phone from their carrier, buy an iPod nano (or the like) with fifteen hours of battery life and still make phone calls and only pay .99 a song.

Footnote - The real fun will come with the spin when this flops. I wouldn’t try to draw any conclusions from this one about consumers, cell phones and music other than the fact that consumers aren’t stupid.

Edward Baig also has a review with similar complaints.

I’ve previously mentioned a good review of the Lenovo Z60t Thinkpad and now Tim Supples at Laptop Logic provides a more detailed one and it’s positive as well:

With the launch of the Lenovo Thinkpad Z-Series, a lot of fears have been revealed as well. Many die hard Thinkpad-fanatics, current Thinkpad customers, and potential Thinkpad owners have all expressed concern about how Lenovo would handle the first launch of a new Thinkpad. And we are here to say, put your concerns away. This Thinkpad is definitely different, but still maintains a lot of the core principles that make up the traditional Thinkpad. There will be naysayers that think this is a completely Lenovo-designed notebook and thus inferior, but they are wrong on both counts. The Z-series has been in the works at IBM for a while before Lenovo entered the picture. While it is unclear what changes the Lenovo buyout may have had on the Z-series, none of them were a step in the wrong direction.

The Lenovo Thinkpad Z60t is a stark departure from the standard Thinkpad hierarchy, shaking things up with rounded corners, optional display covers, and a Start key. Our model came with the optional titanium display cover, and it is stylish looking. A long-time criticization of Thinkpads was their plain black stylish, with only a splash of color from logo’s. The titanium cover adds a sexy coat to the machine, making it look more like a hip accessory than a powerful business tool. Despite being a very portable 14″ widescreen under 5lbs, the Z60t is not lacking in performance. A selection of Celeron M and Pentium M chips are available, with a speedy Pentium M 780 (2.0GHz) in our test model. Hard drives are available up to 100GB 5400RPM and DVDRW drives are optional, both of which are on our Z60t. The only lacking part performance-wise is the graphics, Intel’s GMA900 integrated GPU is the only option here.

Much more by following the link. And as in the previous review, the integrated EV-DO is viewed as a big advantage.

Michael Gartenberg says it’s a delight for road warriors. Aside from the usual goodies,

While there’s a lot to love in this unit, including a/b/g WiFi (so I can stream content off my MediaCenter PC), Bluetooth, three US ports, a 1394 port and an SD reader, what really sets this machine apart is integrated EV-DO. No more looking for a Starbucks, just click and connect. Unlike other WAN integration efforts from Sony using EDGE and Cingular, which is nice, EDGE capability just doesn’t compare in terms of performance to EV-DO.

If you aren’t familiar with EV-DO, Wikipedia has the details. The key is:

Compared to 1xRTT networks currently being used by operators, or the GPRS and EDGE networks employed by their GSM competitors, 1xEV-DO is significantly faster, providing access terminals with download speeds of up to 2.4 Mbit/s. Only terminals with 1xEV-DO chipsets can take advantage of the higher speeds.

And of course “the dual announcement of Verizon and Sprint’s deployment of 1xEV-DO in 2004, and similar announcements by smaller operators in 2005″ doesn’t hurt the technology story.

Back to the Thinkpad, it’s nice to see that Lenovo’s takeover of the old IBM PC Company hasn’t caused a cheapening of features, but there are some differences:

Even more shocking, my unit isn’t standard ThinkPad black but actually a shiny Titanium (in fact, the lid is actually made of Titanium).

All in all, a thumbs up review.