[Ben]

Well, I decided it's time for my 3G datacard to stretch its legs.

My T2XP, that phenomenal minature laptop from Sony, can actually handle World Of Warcraft, just about. That's all good, because so can my Vodafone Connect Card. I've been too busy to play World of Warcraft lately, but as things wind down for Christmas I decided to fire it up and see what I've been missing.

It appears that one of the things I've been missing is a 277MB patch. MMORPGers will know that patches are a regular occurrence in order to keep the dynamic worlds fresh and exciting - it's what we pay our subscription for - but this one is particularly large.

Rather than flick the WLAN button and download over my 2mbit ADSL connection I decided to let the Vodafone Connect card tackle the hefty transfer. It's doing so right now, munching away at up to 30KB/sec (about 240kbps), sitting on a chest of drawers upstairs where the Vodafone 3G signal in my village is stronger than down here where I'm sat right now.

The bitorrent-style updater has already detected a firewall, which I'd imagine is simply Vodafones various ways of connecting Connect Card users to the Internet, but the download pushes on.

How will it do? Well, we'll soon find out :)

[Ben]

Well, it's done!

It took a while, but the total amount transferred was 366MB without interruption. Why so much more? Well, as I said, it's a bitorrent style client, meaning it was using the upstream as well to share the partially downloaded patch with others at the same time.

I've got to hand it to Vodafone, that was an outstanding performance. Stable, reliable, dependable. As mobile broadband becomes more affordable and more available it's going to be a fantastic thing, and it's going to transform our world. Whether 3G will be the enabler of affordable, available wireless connectivity, however, is another question, but it's certainly giving me a taste.