After you see the price of the antenna plus the antenna connector, you will come to the conclusion that you're better off just buying a new datacard with a proper external antenna connector, and buying an antenna for it The E220's biggest weakness is its lack of an external antenna port.

On pages where you want to see the images in better quality, perhaps hitting Ctrl-F5 to force refresh the page will help?

Sorry for barging into this thread, since I'm not a Maxis Wireless Broadband user (only their I2G product), but I find it strange that www.silenceisdefeat.org is not accessible on Celcom3G nor Streamyx. I wanted to try out the ideas here with my Celcom connection, but no go, since I can't even access that website, and since Celcom fixed their network problems, ICMP packets have apparently been blocked altogether, so I can't even do a trace to see where the packets are dying

Sorry for being OT

Do you have personal experience with both products to make this statement? What are the advantages of the 875U over the E220 that makes it a better modem?

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Added on December 18, 2007, 9:46 amA Huawei E220 can be purchased nowadays for less than RM 650 if you are patient and good in negotiation skills. Therefore the advantage swings Celcom's way for an 18 month calculation.

Isn't the minimum contract period for Maxis broadband offering 24 months instead of 18?

This post has been edited by wr6969: Dec 18 2007, 09:46 AM

I'm not saying who's right or wrong, I apologise if I seemed like picking on your post Anyway, I saw somewhere that the contract period was 24 months now, that's why I asked. If it was indeed 24 months, Maxis "advantage" disappears. And I2G is a standalone package without any hardware or contract period, I should know, I got one, and I'm not a Maxis voice customer.

One thing I can say, having played with so many HSDPA devices, is that an external antenna does make a difference between a stable and reliable signal compared to the puny built in antenna It's a reallly worthwhile investment; the only reason why more people have not got one is because of the cost, and availability in Malaysia.

I own 5 HSDPA devices at the moment, with an E220 on the way soon, so I shall be able to see the major differences between all of them soon.

Here are my comments on the 875U:

[1] yes, the 875U can be plugged standing up. But you can achieve the same result with the E220 by taping a velcro to it, and sticking it to the back (or wherever gives you the best signal) of your notebooks screen

[2] using USB extension cables will result in power loss. Devices such as these require a stable source of power to operate properly. USB ports are already notorious for not outputting a stable source of power, what will happen if you plug another USB extension cable? I typically don't use such cables

[3] actually, until today, I haven't found out what the battery is for. Really. All I know is that if I take out the battery, the device will work for about 5 seconds, then the notebook will lose all contact with the card, then find it again. This process repeats over and over. Therefore, I've discovered that if the battery dies (and all batteries will die eventually, it depends on time and your luck) the device is pretty much unusable unless you get a new battery (which is not easy or next to impossible to find at the moment )

[4] I do agree with you on one thing - Sierra manufactures good quality products. I use to own 3 875s and they all performed admirably, sometimes going up to two days without disconnecting from the UMTS/HSDPA service. One major advantage that the 875U has over the E220 is the ability to attach an external antenna for areas where signal reception is poor. This is, by far, the biggest advantage of the 875U over the E220.

Not a problem. But I must tell you beforehand that we are on two separate systems - you're on 121.120.x.x, while I'm on 58.71.x.x When you guys suffered that outage two or three days ago, I was unaffected, I was still downloading happily from rapidshare servers at more than 300KB/s sustained.

Where do you want me to test latency to? Just the speedtest servers? Google? Yahoo? And I won't have details for torrent speeds - I've given up on torrents, using flux/utorrent webui providers and premium file hosters instead

Yes, they have this policy too. If you break the law and they come after you with a valid court order, of course Maxis and Celcom, and for this purpose, all other ISPs will release your personal information to comply with the law.

Ahem, you need to correct your statement about Celcom's offering, bro.



It's buried under their Fair Usage Policy, the link is next to their Terms and Conditions link when you open the Celcom Broadband link.

We have to consider the possibility that in the case of their resellers, Maxis may be "allowing" them a higher bandwidth/higher speed to help them sell the service. After all, if their speed is the same as other subscribers, ie. sucks, then how are they going to be able to "con" people into signing up?

Not to forget the other variable in this equation - the backhaul capacity from the base station to the backbone. Let's say you have a new RBS with a 10mbps backhaul capacity. 10 users on HSDPA capable devices get on at the same time and do active transfers; each will get 1mbps. Contrast that with an older "upgraded" RBS, with a backhaul of 100mbps, and the same 10 users get on, with active transfers; each will get 10mbps in this case. As this information is not available publicly, it could account for performance differences as well, in addition to the factors you've mentioned.

But the I2G service is somewhat slower these three days. I was accustomed to 400KB/s (+/- 10%) speeds, this has now dropped to around 300KB/s (+/- 10%) lately. Testing was done to the same file hoster. It appears that even their premier I2G service is getting a wee bit congested.

Mind sharing where exactly in Penang you saw this please?

Thanks...