Verizon Wireless Revisited

[HAltschule]

What's Needed to Surf the Net using my Laptop and Verizon Wireless account (with Treo 700)?

I know there are some phone and computer gurus around here that are much more familiar with this than I...so maybe someone can give some ideas?

What cable to I need to run from laptop to Treo 700? How do I get to a connection to surf the web? Help?

 

[B Ozanne]

I'm not sure about cables, but doesn't the Treo 700 have Bluetooth? If you're laptop has Bluetooth you can use that, otherwise you can buy a USB Bluetooth adapter.

Once you have that you can spend the next 3 days trying to figure out how to make the connection actually work.

 

[Jonathan Merage]

As long as your laptop has a working PCMCIA card slot (I can't think of any that don't), you shouldn't even need to mess around with the Treo. Unless you have a specific need to connect through your mobile device, Verizon has a couple of wireless data cards that slide straight into your laptop & provide excellent data connectivity--not to mention ease of use! I can personally vouch for this setup as it hasn't failed me once this year, and it's FAST (as long as you're in/near a metro area).

Here's what I use (it's one of a couple, I think):
Verizon BroadbandAccess Card

Hope that helps!

Jon

 

[HAltschule]

The only problem (relatively speaking) is that that service, Broadband access, costs $59 per month on top of your normal plan. I thought there was some conversation a while ago about a backdoor access phone number and login to access the internet from your laptop while connecting thru the phone? That is, a cord from your cell phone to the laptop and a dial-up number that allows you to access the net for free.

If anyone knows about this, I would sure appreciate some feedback. You can PM me if you don't want to post it on the board publicly. Thanks.

 

[Tony Perkins]

Go to the Yahoo groups "InternetByCellPhone" and subscribe to it (groups.yahoo.com). In the files section, you'll find faqs and everything you need to connect up "backdoor". I've been able to connect with the slower Q2N (14.4k) and the faster National Access this way after I bought a cheap USB data cable to go between my phone and the laptop. It's not the best access and is spotty, but it sure beats $60 extra a month. BTW, it will also use your minutes as you are connected, which is a big downside if it's not a free night or weekend.

 

[HAltschule]

Thanks!! I just ordered "Mobile Office" from Verizon. A VZ employee told me about the backdoor trick and that it costs nothing and just eats up minutes. I have 2100 per month so I should be fine!! I am excited to try it out once my LG Cable/Office disk arrive.

 

[Tony Perkins]

Just FYI, I didn't get the backdoor access to work with mobile office, but it worked fine setting up my own dialup connections. Best of luck.

 

[HAltschule]

I purchased the "mobile office" from Vz for my LG phone. After downloading the cd's, i set everything up using my phone [email protected] and a password of vzw. When i dial up to "#777" it connects for 2 seconds and then disconnects saying there was some sort of error.

Has anyone figured out how to get this to work using the mobile office yet?

 

[Tony Perkins]

If you don't have a data plan, I'd recommend not using mobile office. Set up your connections manually using the info in that InternetByCell group mentioned above.

Sometimes you need an extra init string. Check you modem settings in control panel->system->Hardware->Device Manager->Modems. Up the properties and go to advanced. Enter AT$QCMDR=2 if you are connecting to Q2N, or the same but =3 if you are connecting to National Access.

 

[HAltschule]

OK, thanks. I'll give it a try and let you know how it goes.

BTW...if this is still problematic, can't i just get a AOL acct for like $12 a month and connect to their DUN that way? Just wondering as a last ditch effort............

 

[Shane Hale]

Treo 700

You could use your Hot Sync cable and a little program called Pdanet and you get about 360kbs, all I have to pay for is the data $29bucks a month.

 

[B Ozanne]

Is anybody using V Cast on their Verizon mobile phone? I'm not all that interested in downloading video clips or movie trailers, but I would like the unlimited web access V Cast gives you.

 

[Doug_Kiesling]

I don't have V Cast but I do have SmartVideo on my Pocket PC. SmartVideo lets me watch live TV on my phone. So I can watch

The Weather Channel (did they really play the video)
MSNBC
NBC
ABC
and a lot of other cable network feeds.