EVDO in the boonies....

Took the Nokia N800 Linux internet tablet and its little GPS
receiver with me into the SC boondocks to fix a church organ,
today. It was a beautiful day in the South Carolina countryside,
here in the middle of a drought. The ocean is backing up into
the rivers, threatening to salt the fresh water intakes of many
municipal water systems. There's just no flow!

The N800 was BT connected to my MotoROKR Z6M to download all the
new composite maps/sat photos the Maemo Mapper linux program was
using to plot our route and show me what was on either side of me
I couldn't see through the trees. There's still a lot of forests
in SC that haven't been axed into oblivion, which makes the air
smell wonderful.

Not once did Alltel's constantly-connected EVDO data network on
its 800 Mhz B system fail to stay connected to the tablet and
provide the new map data for the trip. I was also playing a
couple of internet radio stations on the N800's media player to a
little FM transmitter that feeds my car stereo on 88.3 Mhz. I'd
like to personally thank the BBC, and the British people, for a
fine day of listening to radio that WASN'T just one long string
of continuous commercials like our local stations all are.

When I got to the church, I waited for the pastor to come unlock.
On his way in, I showed him what his little country church looks
like from space. He didn't even know there was a fairly large
pond behind his church past the woods that line the back of the
church property.....(c;

Larry
--
Thanks, Alltel. Great data and voice service to rural SC....
Pastor will be in touch with my account info for credit. His
Verizon phone was dead unless you hold it up in the air just
right. In the church yard, Alltel had 4 bars! Thanks for my
commission credit. Just add it to the others...(c;