getti
24th September 2008, 09:34 AM
The team at Brands2Life were kind enough to lend me a USB Modem Stick E170 for my trip to Centreparcs in Nottingham recently as the only condition was I write a review on my experiance
The Design
The E170 stick is T-Mobile's branded version of what both 3 and Vodafone also offer and being typical T-Mobile they have used the brand colours of mainly black with a magenta tip on the end so it stands out.
In the box you get the USB Stick, Cable to extend the range if needed, a pink lanyard if you want to take the modem with you, a nice handy laptop stand which the modem sits in and then on the back of your laptop so its not getting in the way (a great free addition to the box) and the usual CD and manuals. The SIM card comes seperate from T-Mobile and you have to slide out the little tray once you take the lid off and insert the SIM card.
Installing
Installing is a breeze as all the software you need is on the stick itself. Once you plug it in within a few seconds a install screen comes up where you just hit 'Next' a few times and it installs itself.
Once this has completed a icon on the desktop which looks like your modem appears which you double click and you get the main desktop window (see attached photo)
The Software
Once the software is loaded and running you get the screen as seen in the photo attached. From a software point of view it really is well done and you have a wide range of options from tracking your Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Yearly use of modem data, your maximum speed is also shown and you get a huge graph so you can see during your connection just how fast it runs at. You get a tab for a phone book so you can keep all your contacts with you on your laptop (great incase you loose your phone) and although you cant call from this modem you CAN send texts which is another tab.
Texts are not included on price plans for the modem and are charged as extra but its a handy thing too have as you can also receive texts on it too. When on holiday i put in my staff sim which gets free data and not only was i browsing the net but sending and receiveing texts all from my laptop.
Speed / Reliability
Speed is different for everyone as it depends on a wide range of things like what speed the mast can run at, how many people are using it, how far you are from it, what the weather is like and so on. I will go from my experiance which is not a normal one as I was in Sherwood Forrest in Centreparcs as I said at the start of the review. So imagine my suprise when I plugged in the modem in my room and up came 3/4 bars of HSDPA signal!. At its peak i managed to hit 1.6mb/s which again considering my location I was more than impressed with!. I also had use of a Vodafone modem but that only had GPRS and was slower than dial-up so never got a look in.
Most of T-Mobile's sites now have HSUPA on so not only do you get high speed downloading of things like music tracks but you also get high speed uploading so you can put videos on YouTube faster of if you run your own site you can use FTP with much faster speeds.
As far as being reliable is concerned that is not an issue at all. i had no cut outs, signal was spot on and speeds were very consistant which when I compare to using a 3 modem which can connet at 1.5mb/s one second and then the next 0.3mb/s theirs was very hit and miss where as the E170 kept a great connection through every browsing session.
Conclusion
The experiance whilst using the modem was top class from installing to browsing at high speeds. This was a press loan so was free for my trial but the deals available to customers are very well priced too.
Mobile Broadband 12/18 Months @ £20.00 a Month
Mobile Broadband 24 @ £15 a Month
In both cases the modem is free and when you also consider the modem can run at 7.2mb/s once the masts support it you are pretty much future proof for the next 1/2 years with speeds.
The Design
The E170 stick is T-Mobile's branded version of what both 3 and Vodafone also offer and being typical T-Mobile they have used the brand colours of mainly black with a magenta tip on the end so it stands out.
In the box you get the USB Stick, Cable to extend the range if needed, a pink lanyard if you want to take the modem with you, a nice handy laptop stand which the modem sits in and then on the back of your laptop so its not getting in the way (a great free addition to the box) and the usual CD and manuals. The SIM card comes seperate from T-Mobile and you have to slide out the little tray once you take the lid off and insert the SIM card.
Installing
Installing is a breeze as all the software you need is on the stick itself. Once you plug it in within a few seconds a install screen comes up where you just hit 'Next' a few times and it installs itself.
Once this has completed a icon on the desktop which looks like your modem appears which you double click and you get the main desktop window (see attached photo)
The Software
Once the software is loaded and running you get the screen as seen in the photo attached. From a software point of view it really is well done and you have a wide range of options from tracking your Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Yearly use of modem data, your maximum speed is also shown and you get a huge graph so you can see during your connection just how fast it runs at. You get a tab for a phone book so you can keep all your contacts with you on your laptop (great incase you loose your phone) and although you cant call from this modem you CAN send texts which is another tab.
Texts are not included on price plans for the modem and are charged as extra but its a handy thing too have as you can also receive texts on it too. When on holiday i put in my staff sim which gets free data and not only was i browsing the net but sending and receiveing texts all from my laptop.
Speed / Reliability
Speed is different for everyone as it depends on a wide range of things like what speed the mast can run at, how many people are using it, how far you are from it, what the weather is like and so on. I will go from my experiance which is not a normal one as I was in Sherwood Forrest in Centreparcs as I said at the start of the review. So imagine my suprise when I plugged in the modem in my room and up came 3/4 bars of HSDPA signal!. At its peak i managed to hit 1.6mb/s which again considering my location I was more than impressed with!. I also had use of a Vodafone modem but that only had GPRS and was slower than dial-up so never got a look in.
Most of T-Mobile's sites now have HSUPA on so not only do you get high speed downloading of things like music tracks but you also get high speed uploading so you can put videos on YouTube faster of if you run your own site you can use FTP with much faster speeds.
As far as being reliable is concerned that is not an issue at all. i had no cut outs, signal was spot on and speeds were very consistant which when I compare to using a 3 modem which can connet at 1.5mb/s one second and then the next 0.3mb/s theirs was very hit and miss where as the E170 kept a great connection through every browsing session.
Conclusion
The experiance whilst using the modem was top class from installing to browsing at high speeds. This was a press loan so was free for my trial but the deals available to customers are very well priced too.
Mobile Broadband 12/18 Months @ £20.00 a Month
Mobile Broadband 24 @ £15 a Month
In both cases the modem is free and when you also consider the modem can run at 7.2mb/s once the masts support it you are pretty much future proof for the next 1/2 years with speeds.