Well this certainly sucks! Nothing more annoying than trying to get a new PC card to work only to have the drivers sit there an laugh at you.

Over the last 24 hours I’ve been in heavy EVDO mode and a number of people in conversations have asked me for more details aboutVerizon’s EVDO broadband wireless. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

1) To clarify from my first post the service costs $79.99 per month plus tax. I left out the per month part originally but it’s been added now, sorry.
2) The Kyocera KPC650 PC card is their newest PC card and it somehow conflicts with the M1400 Tablet PC. It will not load the drivers, no matter what we’ve tried to do to make it work. We spent hours trying to get Windows to recognize the drivers — no dice. When my trouble ticket with Verizon got elevated the technician decided to call the manufacturer, Kyocera, directly about it and their response was a rather puzzling: “we don’t work with Tablet PCs.” Huh? That’s what the technician relayed to me, so it’s third party information but if this is true — and I have no reason not to believe the technician — that’s crazy. A device designed for portable devices that doesn’t work with Tablet PCs?
3) The possible solution I’m being now recommended is to try out the older 5220 PC card to see if that’s more compatible with the M1400. The Verizon technician said that seemed to work well. I remember seeing a guy using an M1400 Tablet PC with EVDO at the Tablet PC get together at CES, so I know that there is some card that works with the M1400, but apparently not the one pictured above: Kyocera KPC650.
4) There is only one 5220 card in the entire Puget Sound area according to John at Verizon who did some very helpful calling around for me. He said I could also order one online but I’d like to try this out sooner of course, if possible, so am about to make the trip to acquire that one card (if possible).
5) Last night we traveled all around the Puget Sound area and I was able to use the EVDO at speeds up to 1.2mb (download) and 180-200k (upload) in some areas near the Seattle center. The connection only went dead for a short trip off the Bainbridge ferry on the island and then picked up with 2 of 5 bars for most the trip all the way south.
6) I had a brief IM conversation with Chris Pirillo while driving around. Solid connection, very fast response, no issues. Works good on our older Sony VAIO laptop with Windows XP Pro.
7) Discovered that by driving just a few short miles east from our home and also our office on main street we could get the EVDO broadband at 800k down 80k up, so my first report that it wasn’t availabe in our area should have carried the word “yet.” [Read the rest]