Registered: Oct 2000
Location:
Posts: 5

Has anyone tried Omnisky or YadaYada in Chicago or its suburbs? How good is the coverage?

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 276

I haven't tried it yet. But as we all know, Chicago has its wierd quirks about coverage. My friggin Ameritech (now Verizon) StarTac sucks. So, I doubt wireless modems will be any better. But, I hope I am wrong, I want to get GSM working with VoiceStream when they come into Chicago.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location:
Posts: 17

My Omnisky is working well for me. I live in the Lincoln Park area & work in the loop. I bought it out in Vegas, & it worked like crap out there, but the service is much better in Chicago.

Registered: Sep 2000
Location:
Posts: 117

some trouble

I have Omnisky and live in Lincoln Park, work in the loop. My coverage has been rather spotty in my "real-world" tests. I cannot get a reliable signal on the floor of my office (28th floor of a 44 story building), but that is not too surprising because our Nextels do not work up there either. I also could not get a consistent signal during my ride on the Brown line to work. I have not conducted enough sampling--I can only assume I'll have decent overall average, but only time will tell.

P.S. On a more geeky note, when I do have a good signal I was able to connect via PalmVNC to my home computer (running Windows 2000 Pro on a cable modem).

Registered: Nov 2000
Location:
Posts: 2

Wireless Coverage

As an alternative to Omnisky, how is the @ctiveLink coverage in Chicago or elsewhere? Although ReFlex is slower and doesn't have the fancy web-clipping available (as far as I know) it should be the most reliable/accessible for e-mail and that sort of thing.

Has anyone used the @ctiveLink? I haven't had the desire to cough up another $400 yet.

Registered: Sep 2000
Location:
Posts: 17

Well, I've had a few days now to play around with it. I must say that I'm really happy with the omnisky performance in Chicago. I can even get a signal in some locations where my AT&T cell phone is dead.

So far it's worked for me downtown, in SOGO (south of grand & odgen), on the north side, & in the western suburbs.

We have a bunch of hardware at work, so I had a chance to try the palm5/omnisky, the palm7 & my visor all side by side (only downtown so far).

The Visor had a slightly better signal than the palm5, but they were really similar. The palm 7 was usually less & much slower bringing up pages.

& zelchenko, thanks for the tip on palm VNC. I got it running on my home dsl based PC & it's very cool. Way too slow to be practical, but still a very neat trick.

Registered: Nov 2000
Location:
Posts: 2

Pskerrett,

I am impressed that Omnisky has a better signal than AT&T, the CDPD engineers would be happy to hear that. I am not sure I understood your response above though as relates to the @ctiveLink which is NOT Omnisky. Have you tried the @ctiveLink too? Does it do "web-clipping", etc? How about a Blackberry on Motient vs. Palm VII? How can you be so lucky to try out all the gadgets simultaneously. Thanks!

Registered: Sep 2000
Location:
Posts: 17

Nope, I havent tried the active link or blackberry. Only palmV & VII

Registered: Nov 1999
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 148

Well, I'm in the near west subburbs (oak park area) and Omnisky is VERY spotty. I have found it to be unreliable during the day.. But at about 11pm it's pretty good. I have had problems with the module and despite OS CS, it's a random occurence if it'll connect. I returned my modem after only 2 weeks because the waiting is VERY inconvenient to the point that it would be faster to just go find a computer.

Mike

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Chicago, IL
Posts: 276

Mike:

How did the return work out... did they make you pay for the term of service?

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