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Old 12-27-2005, 11:46 AM
CalvinTy CalvinTy is offline
Junior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 3
Default Re: Playing on the road....in the passenger seat

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In a few months I might make the drive w/ my girlfriend from California to Michigan and we'd hit some casinos on the way (suggestions for good B&M $1-$2, $2-$5 and $5-10NL games?) and we'll also play online. During the down time I'm thinking that the passenger can play online, but that brings up a few questions:

1. Who has the best/largest broadband coverage? I'm guessing Verizon, but that's just because I have cell phone service through them. In all reality I don't know anything about broadband coverage, who offers it or if it is available literally anywhere so any help would be appreciated.

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Since I have extensive experience being the passenger playing online poker in the MD/VA/DC metro area with a carpool friend (and he also does play online when I drive), I can try to give some information here. First, I used my work's Verizon PCMCIA PC5220 card on a laptop and I enjoyed consistent connection with 2 or 3 expected loss-of-signal-connectivity during the 1-hour commute in the same areas. Later, I got a free laptop of my own and then I looked around for reasonable monthly service so I chose T-Mobile's $29 monthly "Internet plan" and purchased a Sierra GC79 PMCMIA card (not sure I got the model number right). I noticed with T-Mobile's service, I got more loss of connectivity across more spots than Verizon & it seemed like Verizon was simply better with keeping signal alive while being mobile. Though, Verizon's service, last time I checked was $59 monthly (it was higher in the past...).

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2. How fast is the service? Is it more comparable to dial up or cable modem?

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It is VERY comparable to dial-up, but can be better than 28.8k but less than 53k. I have downloaded a couple of MB files before via this method.

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3. Has anyone tried playing while traveling before? How difficult/nauseating is it?

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The experience itself is like playing on dial-up.... just needing some patience sometimes.... SUGGESTION: NEVER play any NL tables via national wireless... just play Limit tables or tourneys. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] I got flamed/almost reported when I hit Q flop AND heart draw with QT hearts, and hitting 3rd heart at turn, but someone had hit his ace nut heart draw and I lost connection EXACTLY at that time. Good thing the table had already realized I was slow sometimes and did lose connection once a few orbits beforehand... (*sorry for the babbling in reminiscing an old memory, heh*)

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5. Is it likely that we will encounter too many dead zones or is broadband different in that way from cell phone service?

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First, Verizon does have two "levels" of broadband national wireless speeds. In select cities, the broadband is comparable to office/home LAN, very good speeds. But for most part, the connection you get is through their GSM/GPRS network just like cell phone service. Second, there may be quite few dead zones going across country... I have a T-Mobile Sidekick II e-mail pager, and it does not have service in some of those stretches of long highways trips, FYI.

* CalvinTy
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