Given up

[JOBBED]

Bought a Solomon GPRS USB unit off e-bay 2nd hand for 70 quid.

Rarely use the 3G, but the software is sooo annoying to use even for GPRS .
Got it working with the Orange sim in 5 mins and the difference is amazing, it connects from clicking on the connection icon to the Orange network in 3 seconds, everytime without fail.

Simply wipes the floor wirh Oranges own bloatware, no servlogs running in background, and the unit has signal status leds so you can move it round to get a good signal, being USB you can stick it on the end of a extension lead.
Technically it isn't as fast, only class 8 GPRS ,but speeds are the same as the data card .
Neat thing as well, I'm a buyer of ultrasmall notebooks, won't need a PCMCIA slot anymore.
If they just brought out a 3G version :)
Guess you should be able to use the new 3G phones as modems over bluetooth, that would do nicely.

[MJH]

After speaking to Orange CS, I decided to ring my local orange shop and spoke to my old friend enquiring about my pre-ordered upgrade.

To my utter surprise he said they actually had the LG handsets IN STOCK!!! He said they had 8 and weren't even allowed to demo them to customers.

Make of this what you will.

[Gunner]

Yep, there is stock out there - but you'll be hard pushed to find people within Orange who will admit it.

Unless something on the trial is seriously wrong, I can't see the launch of handsets being too far away now. I mean, surely it's going to be before November... surely...

[99900]

Yes

I can confirm this.

I went into the orange shop this morning at 9 when they opened.

I was told this and after much charming of the female staff member she got the babys out for me(no the phones) but that was better than her tits lol.

She said they are just waiting for the word and go go go go go.

She has reserved me one SE Z1010 and I have just got a LG 8120 on 3 just to test it out its going back before the 14 days

[JOBBED]

AND another thing, the software for the Solomon survives hibernation mode, you can unplug the device go into Hibernation, restart laptop, plug back in and 5 secs later you're online.
Or leave the device in... I've been hard pushed to catch it out.

It also interferes with the speaker on my laptop, very subtle typical GSM buzzing(if you use the provided USB extension it goes away) this is actually a nice audible indicator when the card is working, helps those 'is it doing anything' moments,
also handy to check for something accessing the net when it shouldn't.

Been using it all day and it's brought a smile to my face, this is how the Orange software should be and quite clearly isn't.

[JOBBED]

Do I ever shut up?

Pinged my online game server in France and got a rather nasty 2.7 seconds, thats over GPRS anyone find 3G faster or is it just as bad?

[orange3gdata]

Jobbed that's absolutely fantastic - I'm in the same situtation - hates the software etc.

Do you know if it's possible to bypass the software while still using the orange datacard?

Judging from your post it's unclear if you bought the salomon usb unit because you wanted to ditch the software or the pcmcia.

Cheers,

O3gData

[JOBBED]

Bit of both really, the latest PDA sized notebooks don't have PCMCIA slots, surely that format is getting a bit long in the tooth now, there isn't anything you plug into it that can't be done by USB.

I'm guessing that the problems with the Orange software are all to do with the 3G/GPRS handshake.

No everything I do to try to make the datacard card connect without the Orange software fails, the card just won't initialize, there must be a driver somewhere for it.