T-Mobile Rocket™ 3.0 4G Laptop Stick
2.4
5
18
18
Can't pull in a strong signal
I have used the Rocket for 2 yrs...struggled to get and hold a strong signal. I talked to service almost every week. Finally they said; 'they do not guarantee delivery of service." However they did want to collect money every month. Is that just because I signed up to try them??
The service worked fine for about 1 month. As time went on I got disconnected and very weak signals. My computer showed searching and waiting for the internet site to connect. Many times it never could connect and I would get an internet failure message. Very Frustrating.
Service Support was not very knowledgable. I finally had to drop and go to Verizon, which works much better happily.
A 10 yr customer, but not any more.
March 12, 2013
OSX 10.7 Driver Fails
Regardless of what the software requirements state, this device and it's current drivers do not work out of the box with Apple OSX 10.7. Brought it back to Wal-Mart after fighting with it for hours. The 4G hotspot on the other hand has a decent working driver but you can't turn off the WI-FI so it acts like this USB stick abeit with a functional driver.
October 14, 2012
The rocket is great..
I have the rocket and I find it works well... no problems connecting and my computer runs fast..Plus, Im not stuck to a WIFI area. I can use either Wifi or Broadband anyplace I want to.. love it!
September 5, 2012
...if you're desperate...
This will get you onto T-Mobiles' "4G-capable" data-plan, and it works with Windows and Linux (Ubuntu) fairly easily. The big problem that I have with it is that it overheats under sustained use and that's especially a problem once you've run past your high-speed data limit and it's running at modem speeds (about 90kb/s). Other problems that I have with it, you can't share the connection at least using the Windows driver. There doesn't seem to be a way to update or change the Windows driver. It's stored in firmware on the Rocket and reinstalls each time the device is connected to the computer. I would probably faint at the port-restrictions if I were to actually investigate further along those lines. I mean, it will get you on the Internet, but in a very limited "corporate" sense. It's far from "unlimited Internet". It annoys me to no end that that sort of hyperbole is legal yet they make you sign a contract full of a million restrictions and qualifications on the Internet they provide. The data rate tied to the data cap is just unbelievably annoying in practice. And it's like squeezing water from a stone to use it once it's past the data-limit. Still probably better than hoofing it to a hotspot in bad weather. If I'm going to pay $70 for 10GB/mo (which seems to be about what I'd use if left to my own devices) the speeds at "high speed' (I get 3G at home and I can get 4G on the local campus) are just *BARELY* fast enough to call it "high-speed internet", about 7Mb/sec down and 2.5Mb/sec up. Compared to a Comcast cable-modem connection it's dog-slow. But it's functional. I've seen worse. But it could easily be better. At $30/month it's a decent deal especially given the fact that it works fine at a small lake about 10 miles from my house while on my old laptop in XP on batteries, just as it does most places. Usually I can get it to work no problem.
But also, usually, I can find a McDonalds or a Dunkin Donughts or something with the same speed or faster, for free. So you should look at it from both perspectives. At home cable is way better, but on the road it makes things a little easier. Not much but still.
Oh and the billing is always a month behind so if you change your plan you still have to pay off the old plan and then your rate will change. Though they will change your *service* immediately if you want that. So to go to a cheaper plan with a lower data limit, you pay for the old plan today as well as next month and get the lower data limit today too. It takes at least a month for the new rate to kick in. And you can't pay off your bill once you're above the data-cap and restore the speed. You will still have to wait until your 30 days are up to get the higher speed back. Don't raise your rate thinking that you can lower it because it will take forever for the lower rate to kick in.
The data-cap is simply asinine especially because it is SO SLOW once you're above the cap. Even that might be tolerable if you could start downloads etc and come back later and they'd be done. But 9 out of 10 times it will overheat or the sites will time out. So at low speeds it's just a step above useless.
August 28, 2012
