It TOTALLY sucks. Before I quit my job, I bought a Palm with wireless internet so I could get quotes for swing trades at work. The speed seriously must be like 300baud. Unreal. It would take 30sec to 2min (usually closer to the latter) to get ONE stinkin' quote off that piece of sh*t. Total waste of time and money (it cost ~$40/month).
What medium were you using for the transmission? I've heard a lot of good stuff about "Wi-Fi" (802.11b). It's not mobile - you have to be stationary - but the speeds it claims are awesom Mb/sec++
I have had verizon cdpd wireless for about three years. The coverage is not perfect but pretty good on Long Island. The downloads are glacially slow. Like four times slower than dial up. But it works. It's $40/month unlimited air time. I can carry my laptop around and check the charts and trade. Q-charts runs very well and I can have four charts up and the delay is only 0.3 to 3 seconds off real time. Datek is real slow this way but still usable. I love being out on my boat catching fish and trading at the same time! Or checking the weather/radar. It's pretty cool. Obviously if you are scalping or doing "fast trading", cdpd is not for you, but to watch your stuff and make a few trades it's not too bad. Also I understand they have a new service that is mobile and as fast as dial-up but has limited air time and is expensive when you go over it. Hope this helps. *********************************** "Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit." -Napoleon Hill
Have you tried satellite? My understanding is that it's very fast. I'm not sure who offers it for boats, but for $40/month for super slow access, it can't be that much more!
I was using the palm.net service. I'm glad I tried it, because it sounded very cool (they even have this thing where you can use the IR port on your palm and aim it at a barcode on an item in the store, and then it will look on the net for a lower price for that item) - but the low speed makes it pretty useless.
"Have you tried satellite? My understanding is that it's very fast. I'm not sure who offers it for boats, but for $40/month for super slow access, it can't be that much more!" Well right now my trading is at the 19 ft cuddy cabin level. When I move up to the yacht level, yes, alongside the jet ski, helicoptor and Playboy playmates I'll have a satellite dish. *************************** "Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown." -H. Ross Perot
I assume there are two types of wireless internet. One being offered by cell phone companies and the other a new one by direct line of site companies. The first has a baud rate of arround 15 and the latter a baud rate of 500-1000. jj
Wireless internet is still in its infancy and barely faster than pager speed. It'll probably take G3 technology to make it reasonable (and that's probably a long way off given the softness in telecom). Temporary middle ground is to hook your cellphone into a Pocket PC or notebook - you can access the internet typically between about 2400-9600 bps depending on your cell provider and connection clarity. Get a big time pack if you plan to use it a lot. WiFi is not wireless internet - it's wireless LAN (basically spread spectrum Ethernet). You can use it to access the internet by bridging the WiFi hub to a router (but it's just an extension of your existing LAN config). It's pretty fast, but you're distance limited and it's usually applied to buildings or maybe campus situations and there are security issues involved. I put it in the house so I didn't have to run Cat 5 everywhere and to get greater flexibility with using the notebooks. Satellite and line of sight microwave aren't what's typically called wireless internet. They're "wireless", but you have to be able to maintain constant dish orientation (whether to the satellite or the top of a building) and of course you have to lug the dish and equipment around with you. If you have a boat, mobile home, etc. and want to use it while parked, you could retarget the dish and then use it (until you wanted to move). Kind of expensive, but if you have the space you could possibly use an automated dish alignment system that could keep the dish targeted on the satellite continuously.