Its 18 hours before my mother turns up here and that means I need to get a lot of work done today. I dragged myself out of bed at 0730, made a cuppa and turned the PC on only to find the Internet down. The TV and phone is out too (triple play, triple away) Luckily, it doesn’t kill my working day because instead of paying for software, I use free online versions (Google docs, Meebo, GMail etc) and I put the money into a cellular data contract. It gives me the perfect backup for situations like today and also enables Internet mobility.
The Shift is working like a dream over HSDPA. Its the fastest built-in 3G data connection I’ve ever experienced and the signal strength is excellent. It feels completely transparent. The 1.8mbps on the Q1b HSDPA and even the 7.2mbps on the Everun dont feel as ‘connected’ as this.
I have LiveWriter running with Firefox in the background (5 tabs, one running Meebo, one running Gmail, one running Google Reader) and I’ve got Aero enabled too! At 800×480 the font size is perfect. The keyboard is working out well (I haven’t even bothered to plug in a full size keyboard yet!) but I suspect ill do that after hitting ‘publish’ on this.
Its not without its problems though. After one and a half hours, I need to plug in a bigger screen because I can already feel my back hurting from looking down. UMPC-itis! One other little issue I have to be careful of is my data usage. I only have a 200MB per month data plan and I’ve already used 12MB in 1.5 hour.
If they don’t fix the connection in two days its going to start costing a lot of money!
This is exactly the sort of situation where an HTC Shift is going to be perfect. Not only will it make a nice slate ultra mobile PC and a nice mobile ultra mobile PC but as a backup Internet connection/PC its a great solution. I’m seriously considering buying one for that reason alone.
[Written using LiveWriter on the HTC Shift]