It's no more expensive in service than a regular WWAN device (and only moderately more expensive in hardware). It's much cheaper than the cradlepoint router I was looking at that had the same functionality.

Side note - on the Mac that wouldn't mount it as a drive; did you have software for a different Novatel device loaded? I ran into that once with the USB760 (which also does the device is it's own installer trick)

Also reduces/eliminates the recharge and LCD whines heard when listening to a powered device in the car via FM radio or aux jack (in that case, throwing one on the power cord was most effective for me, YMMV)

It's a way to upgrade the video unit in a laptop, or a desktop with integrated video, as Yem implied. Sure, it's a little limited now; but I for one would love to be able to have a laptop with the option to get a better video device for it.

IIRC we're at the point now where most high-end games are GPU-bound, not CPU-bound.

It's not all that hard for Amazon to have locked the devices to only be able to access their servers; given that from the breakdown pics given the module is a mini-PCI unit, I would hope they thought about the possibility that someone could rip the card itself out of the unit.

That's the tower limitations, not the SMSC limitations. Though SMS loads up a tower a LOT less than a voice call.

Sign me up

It's a bug in the cicso mac client - it doesn't work over ANY PPP connection

Try this:

http://www.psism.com/pca-cf.htm

Posted at 3:48PM on Jun 27th 2006 by daaper [ ! ]
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This will NOT work for EVDO cards - they are 32-bit (and draw all the power that PC cards are allowed as well); the adapter only supports 16-bit.

Oddly enough - when I had a non-PDA device on Sprint - the IM apps on it used data, and did NOT consume SMS (which, admittedly, I have an unlimited allowance of). So be careful how large a brush you use to tar the carriers with. AFAIK, Sprint's IM apps are still data consumers, not SMS consumers.

I use a pocket PC / Pharos Receiver / Mapopolis combo for the purpose - and you know what? It has the same dang problems (though not usually to the same extent - a half a mile is pretty large). And every time I've checked the mislocated addresses in other mapping tools (google maps, mapquest, etc), they ALL have the same incorrect information - the source data is NAVTEQ in almost all cases, and it's just not pinpoint accurate. I suspect that NAVTEQs source data is the local government, who provides them obsolete data or data that is changed after it is provided.