I am still a bit confused about what racks up the data usage on my air card.  If I go to someone's web album and look at their photos, does this increase my usage?  Does it use more of "whatever" than merely reading their blog?  And lastly, if a person adds a lot of pictures to their blog (not in a separate album) does this affect usage to me?  How about if I upload photos to my blog?

gypsy

Everything you download and upload counts. Looking at the web album uses some data, but looking at the photos in a slide show uses more. But we all do that and most don't go over the 5GB per month, especially if there is only one of you. Watching videos, including youtube.com videos, is where most people get in trouble. One or two 1 to 4 minute videos a day is no problem, but people watch TV shows and movies online and blow out their limit. The other heavy users that get in trouble seem to be those running trading software for stocks and bonds all day long, like day traders.
If you are one person using one computer you should be more than fine. We stay under 5GB with two people reading blogs daily, uploading to our website, doing online banking, watching a few youtube.com short videos sometimes, etc.
I have been told there are utilities on download.com (free or cheap) that will monitor the usage of one computer, but haven't used them since we use multiple computers. With one computer you can also check your usage from the program that runs your aircard internet, Verizon Access Manager for Verizon.

-- Edited by bjoyce at 11:18, 2009-01-29

Thanks, Bill.  I don't watch movies or videos, so I should be ok there.  More and more people are posting lots of photos with their blogs, and I didn't want to inadvertently go over my limit with these.

One other aspect of using the air card, is listening to a radio station.  I love to listen to a station that carries bluegrass for 3 hrs daily, but something tells me this would use my 5gb very quickly. 

gypsy

Yes Gypsy, I bet listening to the tunes may use up alot of usage. When I bought mine they told me any site that is downloading all the time such as news channels, ie espn and the such, to stay away from. You can monitor your usage at any time. That is what I do. So next time, maybe check the usage before listening to it and then check again when you finish.

The first month we had our aircard we went way over the usage limit, in retrospect this was due to a couple of things. First I had to upgrade our laptop to windows service pack 2 and then 3, because the itunes service my wife wanted to use required it. The first upgrade didn't work, so we had to ry a second time. This ate up a lot of usage. Second, I had a You Tube viewing spree for a couple of days, we had dial up before, so You Tube wasn't that much fun. With the aircard, I couldn't stop looking for things to watch. I finally had to go to rehab to kick my habit. Third and probably the biggest damage was done by downloading 4 videos off of itunes. Since then we haven't even come close to hitting the 5GB limit. We haven't curtailed our usage, just don't download videos or watch a lot of You Tube videos. So like others have said most folks will not go over the 5GB limit with normal internet surfing use.

So next time, maybe check the usage before listening to it and then check again when you finish.


I wish it worked like that but at least Verizon does not track your usage that fast, it takes two to three days before the data shows up. 

Radio I can't say but a friend uses Hughes.net with a 200MB per day limit and often listens to music radio and doesn't go over his daily limit. 

Thans for all the good information here. Sherri and I will be going to an Air Card as soon as we hit the road. Our good friends the Halls gave us a router for our house warming party and we are set as soon as we break lose from here. We only do journals and read others so we should be OK. I guess the Air Card is faster than dial-up??? Joe and Sherri

So far, in the middle of Sacramento, my air card has been super fast.  In the middle of Nowhere, however, it might be more like dial-up, but I couldn't say right now.

gypsy

Does anyone have trouble with a signal...like say in the mountains are certain areas in certain states? Are the Air Cards pretty dependable in most areas? Sherri and Joe

I have not found that air cards are 100% dependable in our travels, they work in most places but not all. The West is where things are more iffy. You have to check the coverage maps and drill down to see if you are at risk. Places we have not have Verizon service or it was unusable even with an external antenna and amplifier are Lakewood, NM, Kamiah, ID, Mina, NV and east of Ramona, CA. We had slow but usable service, the slower 1XRTT speed, in Cottondale, AL, Burns, OR, Sunriver, OR, just west of Missoula, MT, Ilwaco, WA, Caliente, NV, Leeds, UT, Bullhead City, NV (some locations can pull in high speed from Laughlin, NV), and Jamul, CA. These are all in the last year. In Quartzsite, AZ we had fast service, but it was often unreliable because the towers were overloaded during the show so it was hit and miss. I heard complaints from others in Quartzsite, including problems uploading photos and downloading large emails without them timing out and starting over again. Then half an hour later everything would be fine. Verizon just bought Alltel so service in Nevada, Kansas, Nebraska and other places should improve. AT&T is supposed to have a bit better coverage, but more of it is the slower EDGE speed. But EDGE is about 1-1/2 to twice as fast as 1XRTT.

I recently bought an aircard from Sprint. I got tired of not having internet. I bought the card in Bullhead City AZ and it worked great there. But here at Saguaro in Benson I only get 1xRTT connection. Better than dialup but not by much. I upload 24/7 to my weather website and surf a lot, and I share the connection with my wife Jan who uses her laptop to get on the internet. So far we have not busted the 5Gb limit.

Also, with Sprint, you can check your usage on their website so you will know how your doing. While I have not hit the limit, I did instruct Sprint to disable my account should I go over...at $0.25/kb it would get very expensive otherwise...

To answer the OP, everything you do will count towards your bandwidth usage. Uploading to your blog, viewing your blog, surfing the internet, reading email, computer downloading Microsoft updates, anti-virus updates, all use your available bandwidth.

-- Edited by NorCal Dan at 22:39, 2009-02-04

I didn't realize you could ask the company to disable your service if you go over the limit.  I wonder if they all do that?

gypsy

I remember drilling down into both Sprint and Verizon's coverage maps and coming up that Verizon was better for us. Since I have a spreadsheet with all of our campground stays in it I just used a copy of the spreadsheet and rated each campground "0" if no service, "1" if 1XRTT (slow, about 1 to 3 times dial-up speed), "2" if it might be high speed, and "3" if the maps said definately high speed (EVDO). Everything was multiplied by number of days in the campground and then the results divided by the number of camping days. Verizon won by a lot. In practice since we got the card in March one place that was a "3" turned out to be a "1" and one place that was a "2" was also a "1". But a few places that were "1" moved to being "3" both on the map and in the real world over the last year. Later I found out that when Sprint marked as "roaming" they meant it was not their tower and the service might be any of no service, EVDO, or 1XRTT. An example was Gillette, Wyoming where Sprint said roaming but Sprint cards were EVDO. Of course current Sprint agreements say no more than 300MB of roaming per month, but I have not heard of anyone having them enforce it. But Benson and Yuma are both 1XRTT on Sprint and EVDO on Verizon. Conversely Ilwaco, WA, where we spend a lot of time because of family and liking the place is 1XRTT on Verizon and EVDO on Sprint. I don't like the 5GB limits. There are a few DSL providers that have low limits on their cheapest plans including Frontier who also has a 5GB limit, but only charges $10 extra if you go over. Most of the other low limits are in the range of 20 to 40GB per month. Most months we are under 4GB of total usage between our Hughes.net system and Verizon, but a couple months we have exceeded it a bit but still under 6GB. We both use the internet through wi-fi and I have two other computers I sometimes use and they always seem to need some kind of update when turned on.

if I need to down load updates or want to watch you tube or anything else that I think will eat up my limit I go to the library or internet cafe and use there free WI-FI