Yep orange did it better by waiting till they had better coverage. I like orange and have been using them for years.  Just on my p800 contract i had with them they messed me a round and so as work pays for a vodafone contract for me i decided to get the data card from them as at the time no one else did one.

I have a friend who works for bt so i can surf most wifi point uk for free so only have the data card for worse case and stuck in middle of field.

Usual Orange. One department not having same info as another department.

I called Orange technical to sort out the Data Counter problem & we found out that the software they currently have is a number of versions behind the one released to stores. Theirs doesn’t even have the additional running counter with reset button so they have raised the whole issue to a higher level.

While talking I then found out that Orange have changed there tariff change policy in June so that instead of the 3 month wait before changing down it is now 6 month :!:

I pointed out that there was nothing in the contract or on the website to which they had to agree saying that in principle I should be able to change but in practice their system is locked to prevent changes down with first 6 months. So the card has gone back as I only intended staying on the high contract for 3 months justifying the £100 saving on the card.

Also found that when the card switched to GPRS in weak 3G areas the card interfered with the TR speaker causing a constant noise which was still there if muting the volume. Some phones can cause this but at least you can move the phone further away which you can’t with the Datacard.

Having a closer look at the Vodafone card now.

Vodafone card does the same with the speaker at times.. not to bad but notice it..

[quote author=“Godspeed”]I just returned my Orange 3g card and got my money back.

Problems are:

The kb counter resets itself every time you connect, Orange when contacted said they cannot fix the problem and suggested I kept my own log on notepad (they were serious).

It cuts out and you lose the connection even when stationary. Whislt I would somewhat expect this in the countryside, I don’t expect it to happen in central London. Don’t bother even trying to get a connection for more than 30 seconds on a train.

Everytime you reconnect it loads up the orange website as your default, this conveniently (for them) chews up your allocated mb’s. It does not matter what your browser default setting is, it loads up an Orange page regardless.

The speed is a third of the Vodaphone equivalent.

So in a nutshell Vodaphone is solid in connection and speed but overpriced. Orange is priced well if the product actually worked.

I say wait around for some more competition or for the prices to go down or for Orange to get their shit together. At any rate it’s not worth going 3g at the moment unless you have cash to throw away.

Here goes my first post to this group having just joined…  Don’t even have a TR yet, but waiting on delivery of a TR1/B I picked up on ebay for $1075…..

Seems to be some confusion over the 3g cards / services / prices / software…

I am currently trialling the orange service on another laptop (old IBM thinkpad).  You can change the software settings to load your own preferred homepage on connection or nothing at all….

Prices quoted elsewhere are wrong.  The Orange unlimited use (fair use 1Gb per month) costs #88.13 including VAT.

I am a very heavy user (expect to exceed the 1Gb usage) and am about to get hold of a T-Mobile card instead.  They offer unlimited (same fair use limit of 1Gb per month) but are cheaper at #70 per month (cheapest available thus far).  The T-Mobile service will only be 128k speed initially but will rise to full G3 over next few months….  Card costs #199 (expensive).

The T-Mobile deal is even better though because included in the tariff (for at least the first year) is unlimited wi-fi access at all their hot spots worldwide.  Their card is a triband 3G/GPRS card (orange is dualband) but does not have wifi.  You need to use your own wifi connection.

Finally!  If you can sign up for one of these as a corporate user (I got one of my employers to do so) then you get an even better deal.  You can get a FREE 3 month period.  No payment for the card, no payment for usage.  Return the card etc within 3 months with nothing to pay.  So this probably means we are guinea-pigs for their service (probably rushed out early to compete with vodafone and orange) but hey, I dont mind!

I will let you know how I get on.  Orange was not great for first few days but now working better.  Hopefully T-Mobile will be similar.

Michael

cool thanks for the update..

The free wifi is a nice addition

I noticed the price went up!

When I quoted the figures they were the ones straight off the Orange website & also what the Orange Shop used & confirmed when I picked up the card. Looked a week latter & the price went up??

Orange technical support have told me they have now corrected the Data counters problem I highlighted to them & new software is available now.

After reading this thread with interest earlier in the year, I thought I’d post my recent experiences with the Orange “Mobile Office Card 3G” 3G/GPRS Data card here in the UK

I’ve used the card exclusively in my TR1M which is usually connected when I’m out-and-about via Bluetooth and my Sony Ericsson P900 (on Orange GPRS).

There are two immediate disadvantages with the data card: it protrudes an inch or so from the pc-card slot on the side of the laptop so has to be removed before the laptop fits into its case.  The second problem is that, unlike my P900, the data card is only powered and tracking cells when the laptop is switched on (of course) - this means that opening the laptop and starting to use the card is a time-consuming process as the data card initialises, starts a network search and generally sorts itself out.  A task that takes many tens of seconds…certainly much longer than bringing the laptop out of hibernation (both from hard disk and from ram hibernation).

Then there is is problem of the card manager software sometimes failing to recognise the card, requiring a reboot of the PC one time in maybe 3 or 4 that I want to use the card.

On the plus side, 3G when it works is very good - dealing happily with 200 or 300-odd kbps streaming video and good latency for interactive use and email / newsgroup downloads from my office lan via an ssh connection.

The Orange 3G coverage seems better than when I used a Vodafone card in similar circumstances a few months ago, with a couple more places (notably around Warminster and Westbury) and along the A303 where the Orange card indicated 3G service whilst the Voda card was resolutely stuck on gprs.

For some bizarre reason, the Orange software doesn’t update the signal strength indicator once a connection is established - it latches the indicator at the point the connection is made.  After that you have to rely on the led indicator on the card itself (blue = 3G, green = gprs or hsd, red = nothing!).

One thing I’d read in other online reviews was the effect of interference on the laptop speakers, even with the laptop volume set to zero!).  I’m pleased to report nothing intrusive there: silent under 3G operation and only very slight noise under gprs.

Overall: it’s the inconvenience and unreliability of waiting for the card to initialise which is the reason I’m returning the card under Orange’s 14 day “money back” offer.  I keen to try a 3G phone which should get around this particular problem, although I don’t want to give up the organiser/PDA functions of the P900 (which runs my life!)

Simon.