Thanks for the helpful links and feedback on the keitai cards. And
thanks Sam for starting this thread! After a difficult signup and a
serious computer failure, I'm online nearly all the time.
In the morning, I read the initial mail about Air H from my hotel room
in Morioka. After paying an enormous hotel dial-up bill for all my
hours online, I was walking by an electronics store selling these
devices. I volunteered to buy one, which seemed exciting to some of the
folks in this provincial capital of Iwate-ken. With my beginner's
Japanese and a lot of patience, I managed to find a gentleman to help me
negociate the seemingly complicated sign-up procedure. He spent three
hours on the phone to DDI, talking them through my tourist visa, my
lacking a permanent residence, and having no Japanese bank account or
Japanese credit card. I couldn't tell if he was helping them bend rules
for me, or if it really didn't matter. But three hours was a long time
to spend on one signup.
After three hours, once the Air H card was slotted in and I could see
nytimes.com, I felt very excited. I thanked him profusely, had my photo
taken with him, and we exchanged business cards. It turns out he worked
for DDI! I'm still not sure why he worked so hard to sign me up.
http://www.links.net/daze/02/01/pix/airh-lg.jpg
I bought one of the 128k models with the little antennae, perhaps it
will start working fast in March? I signed up for Prin the default
service provider, as Earthlink was not supported by the service.
I went to Mister Donut and used the heck out of my new service, loving
wireless. My Thinkpad X21 ran out of juice, I put it to sleep. When I
tried to awake it, it was dead. Windows XP wouldn't boot into Safe Mode
either. After months of seamless computing, it seems the installation
of the Air H pushed my machine over the edge. I had to return from
Akita to Tokyo to get Windows software to boot and fix my laptop!
I erased the Air H drivers, and the drivers from my aborted installation
of Windows 98 only drivers for J-Phone-USB cabling. Maybe there was a
clash there - I clean installed the Air H drivers and now it's working
without incident. Not particularly fast compared to all the broadband
about, but it's definitely a great way to check email from anywhere so
far. The connection control panel has some Japanese text it can't
display in my English-language windows, and it continually purports to
be connecting at 115k. I ran a web-based bandwidth meter from Mister
Donut in Morioka and I was getting 26.7 kbps.
Next week I'll leave Tokyo and head back into Akita's thick snow; I'll
let you know how the reception is up there. There's so many ways to get
online in the big city, this wireless technology matters most to me
where I'm most isolated and cut off from the wonderful world of the web.
Okay,
Justin
http://www.links.net/
Received on Sat Feb 2 11:10:06 2002
