Current notebook is a 4 year old Acer Travel mate 5320.! Looking to buy a Core I5+6gb ram/750 gb HD/15.6" screen with eiether Nvidia GTX540M (2 GB ddr3) or Radeon 5770 or like that- HP DV6 models carry Radeon 1GB DDR5 graphic cards. Laptop prices in US (Best buy/walmart etc) are mouth watering. Here atleast 30% higher. Never used MAC even though wife has company provided Mac book Pro.
I use a win7 notebook for VPN/VPS, but OS X for everything else. BSD/unix/linux is superior in virtually every category, save for apps.
Bought the 4G Elevate hotspot today and will upload a speed-test when it arrives. $60/month for 5GB, but my usage has always been under 5GB when tethering.
US$ 50-50 for 5 GB.!! Here also with out special offer 5 GB is around $30 . Now Special offers offering 10GB around $30. The carriers have not become as smart as US cartel-(some have issued different 3G sim for 3g phone & 3G data cards) Most allow tethering your smart phone to pc/notebook. I even set up local wifi hot spot with Nexus-s. (There is no unlimited data offers except One Govt telecom.but the performance is not good though cheap.Good for downloading.But for streaming quotes from US servers for 8 hours during US market hours-not good enough) here we get around 4-5 mbps (in MDMA downloading can get 500-800 KBPS
I've ended up going with an unlocked Samsung Galaxy S II. Its a world-phone so I should be able to buy prepaid sims abroad and just drop 'em in. I waited to see what Apple did with the Iphone5 but wasn't all that impressed. The Samsung gets great reviews and the Android App market is catching up fast. Also ordered a docking/charging port for tethering, a HDMI adapter and an extra Hyperion battery with charger. Now I'll start looking for a killer laptop. First I'll check out all that were mentioned in this thread. Thanks.
It took some doing to get this Galaxy SII to usb tether to my pc but once I figured it out (you must download the Kies application from Samung and install it on the PC or Laptop) it is exhibiting speeds that are at least twice as fast as my DSL connection was: DSL 4G tethered Galaxy I'm not sure I would recommend an Android phone but this thing is so powerful and beautiful that it is worth the extra technical fiddling necessary to get it to do stuff. Another complication is that is won't do bluetooth with my older bluetooth headsets (Sony DR-BT22 and and older Jawbone, both are Bluetooth 2.1) but it synchs right up with my car which is Bluetooth 3.0. So now I've just got to find a Bluetooth 3.0 headset and I'm good to go.
Setting up internet connectivity in Android is always a problem. I have atleast 4 "APN" configured in my Nexus-S ( more than four 3G players are in my country ) sometime different APN for pre paid and post paid data a/c's. Since both my Nexus-one and Nexus-S were bought from US, customer service here is no use. Local phones can send sms to provider computer and get settings.But not my phone. usually I will search in blogs and connect with APN and other settings. I have two un locked (any sim)GSM data cards (3.6 mbps and 7.2 mbps)but Nexus-S (7.2 mbps)tethering is the fastest as Iam doing right now in to my notebook.
Wow, I would expect more out of ATT LTE. That's pretty weak throughput. Here's my connection from 4G ATT tethered to my MBAir:
I'm at the very limits of geographic coverage and I'm not sure the backhaul component is in place. I'm about an hour from downtown LA. The service isn't really 4G, its something called HSPA+ (AT&T) and without the backhaul I'm getting something like HSPA- lol. The phone thinks its doing HSPA+ but as you see, the data rate isn't fully what we would expect, it should be 5-7 Mbps. Still it is faster than my DSL. I'm moving in the next year or so and will be living in cities so hopefully I'll be getting those fast data rates you guys get. After having this phone for a few days I'm pretty impressed. I'm going to be figuring out the right laptop to replace my old desktop in the next few weeks and then I'll be completely mobile. Your comments have been very helpful Atticus and I've been giving some thought to your "won't trade with Windows" comment.