Let's face it, no phone offers an even close to decent web browsing experience. A laptop simply does a better job. So when Speak out offered an affordable browsing option, I needed to figure out how to get it working on a laptop. I considered tethering, but I do not have a capable phone, and the ones that are capable, are not cheap. So I decided on a generic USB GPRS card I got directly from China. It was garbage. I ended spending a little more, and got myself a Sony Ericsson MD300 from the US.

It works. All I had to do was plug it in, wait for it to automatically install the required drivers, and then select Rogers as a ISP. On the browser, I had to configure the proxy server to 10.128.1.69 at Port: 80 After that, I was web browsing.

A few negatives about the Sony Ericsson MD300. It has no phone support at all, which could be an annoyance, I suppose. Another bother is that it seems to consume more power than just one USB port, but they did supply a cable to hook it up to 2 USB ports. Overall, not horrid negatives.

This Modem is rather versatile though. It accepts Bell, Telus and Rogers 3G sims, so you do not need to do much to get the faster 3g speeds

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with the experience. Speak out was not fast by any means, but it was doing 25 kB a sec, which is bearable enough for most web browsing. I think it is worth it for what you pay for.

I just found that expansys sells the Sony Ericsson MD300 here in Canada For $72 http://www.expansys.ca/d.aspx?i=179386