| girllrig15:30 UTC06 Jul 2005 | curious as to whether or not any expats have this and if so, what is your experience with it? considering moving to an island where i would have to have a dish installed in order to get access, since there are no phone lines and GPRS is too slow.
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| chanchao19:30 UTC06 Jul 2005 | Never heard anything good about ipstar.. Check out the tech forum on Thaivisa perhaps.. Also doesn't it require a phone line for outgoing traffic?
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| naitai_kai_yao07:05 UTC07 Jul 2005 | Ive used the ipstar at home(K.Tao) for 18 months now.It is OK but at 3200 baht a monh for 750MB of data transfer it isnt cheap.The biggest problem is when its faulty(regularly).The engineers have to come from Phuket or Bangkok and you pay their travel.This adds insult to injury as you are also paying for your ipstar to sit there knackered for a couple of weeks while the engineers decide whether to come or not!
Still, when its working it has good speed.I get about 20kb/second downloading files/mp3's etc so thats not bad.
I have ordered a GPRS which should arrive today.After that I can give a report on ipstar vs. gprs in the islands.GPRS seems to be cheap at 900baht for unlimited use but Im unsure of the speed.
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| girllrig11:29 UTC07 Jul 2005 | thanks, i would love to hear how the GPRS goes.
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| steve25221:41 UTC07 Jul 2005 | me too
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| naitai_kai_yao06:58 UTC08 Jul 2005 | me too!
haven't managed to activate the sim yet.
stand by......
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| naitai_kai_yao07:13 UTC15 Jul 2005 | ipstar vs. gprs in Koh Tao.
So after a lengthy wait to get the sim card activated for the gprs it is now up and running.
The first surprise was how fast it is.Seems to be a fair bit faster than dial-up and also connects in a couple of seconds.Google home page loads quickly and searches are completed instantly.It connects at a speed of 115kbps.
If I have no problems with the new gprs this month I will cancel ipstar as its way too expensive.
We did a fun test trying to load the thaivisa forum page using one computer on ipstar and he other using gprs.Pressing the enter key at the same time guess which one loaded quicker? Amazingly the ipstar was slower despite being broadband!! Normally the ipstar seems a bit faster but certainly not worth paying so much extra for.
Conclusion. GPRS is way better.The signal is at full strength at the west and south of the island.Anyone want to see it (or rent the modem-200baht for 24 hours unlimited internet use on your own computer) pop down to my shop.
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| travelfish07:22 UTC15 Jul 2005 | Are you getting 115kbps reliably?
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| chanchao10:49 UTC15 Jul 2005 | While Windows reports a 115 bps connection to the modem, gprs doesn't give you that speed. It's comparable to a good dial-up connection, and it's everywhere so I'm very happy with it. Actually I'm typing this over GPRS (from phone though) Actually most proper phones can be GPRS modems too.. Make sure it also has bluetooth; as long as you have the phone in your pocket or anywhere near you, the computer will find it and connect. Going forward, mobile internet will improve with EDGE and faster.
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| naitai_kai_yao12:17 UTC15 Jul 2005 | No 7 and 8,
Yes that sounds about right.
One slight complaint is that I need to hangup and redail on occasion as it seems to have stalled.Some hours its fine but yesterday afternoon about 4pm I had to redail 3 times in an hour.This wasnt really a problem as it only took seconds to do.
Throwing ipstar away will be a great day.555
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| girllrig19:59 UTC17 Jul 2005 | so did you get a PC card or do you use your phone for GPRS? what service provider are you using? and how do you connect, via bluetooth or USB, etc.? thanks so much for the info!
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| girllrig11:06 UTC18 Jul 2005 | (bump)
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