Airtel in to mobile broadband

I went to Airtel store at Galle road few weeks ago to find out what are the HSDPA packages they offer. I have used Mobitel and Dialog HSDPA packages early so I know both are not delivering what we expect. The problems within those providers I have already discussed in my early posts. Airtel staff is seems very friendly   you don’t have to wait much, the system is efficient. The lady who talked with me about their HSDPA packages told me the details. As she said the speed is fine but I can’t believe that this speed is a possible one, 7.2Mbps? But it is ok if it is at least around 1Mbps. I found that Airtel is offering the best charges in Sri Lanka, looks very cheap comparing to others. But the thing is they are not so assure about the signal strength, means they haven’t got great coverage. That’s a big problem because we buy mobile broadband to use when we travel so it is a considerable fact. Airtel have full coverage only on Colombo . Most importantly Airtel’s unlimited package is truly unlimited. No FUP (Fair User Policy) as Dialog. That’s looks very cool to me because I hate Dialog FUP. Dialog gave me a package called “Unlimited” but actually it is a 6GB package, I cant even brows when they cut the speed to GPRS . My friend bought an Airtel HSDPA connection a month ago, according to him the only problem is the signal strength which is not look consistent. Also they are not sale HSDPA modems at a discount as Dialog but also they have locked the network in their modem also just like what Dialog did. But if you already have a modem bought form Dialog you can just unlock it thanks to Seejay.

How to Unlock the Huawei E220 HSDPA modem

Here is the full details about the Airtel HSDPA packages , any users please do comment about the connection , signal strength of the area because we all need to know about the connection, to find out whether it is really useful to move to Airtel as they said

Package name	Celebration 300	Celebration 600	Celebration 600
Activation fee	Rs.500	Rs.500	Rs.500
Monthly commitment	Rs.300	Rs.600	-
Monthly rental	-	-	Rs.1499
Free data bundle	1GB	3GB	Unlimited
Charges for usage above free bundle	0.5cent per 1KB	0.5cent per 1KB	-
Downlink speed	7.2Mbps	7.2Mbps	3.2Mbps
Upload Speed	1Mbps	1Mbps	1Mbps

Puppy woof woof! (Portable Linux)

Importance of a portable operating system (OS) was come in to my mind a long time ago. As I am not a Window$ user anymore, I was trying to find some Linux portable distribution. My friends give me links to OS such as Damn small Linux, Nimblex and so on. But finally I found the best fit portable OS for me. It’s Puppy Linux.

Think how amazing if you could bring your own personalized OS to where ever you go with your pen drive, and boot it and work like root in every machine. If you need an OS like that Puppy is a best kind of it.

There are so many things to say about Puppy. Puppy has almost all the basic features we can expect from an OS. Browsing internet, graphics, spread sheet, multimedia and everything works perfectly in it. Most of the time puppy automatically detects your hardware tools. Like sound cards and graphic cards. Even latest HSDPA modems you can easily configure any thing plus great online support. You can just download and double click install apps on puppy. There are special software editions for puppy. Like FirePup (for firefox). So it’s so easy and so fast. Most important thing is it uses very less resources. Just around 90MB from your flash drive and very less memory from RAM. Puppy will run well on any old pc or a laptop finely.

There are so many customized puppy versions called Puplets .you can choose a Puplet exactly matching your requirements. (In apps and the outlook). I would say there is a Puplet for every one. Now I am using Boxpup. It is the most suitable puppy version for me. You can find the best puppy version for you in a huge collection of Puplets. So it’s always worth to try it. If you are new to Linux its good for do experiments because what ever you do is in your pen drive so you will loose nothing. You will just need a memory stick .there are so small Puplets even 60MB small. So don’t forget to give a try and explore the beauty of Linux.

Here is the links you will need

Puppy Linux

Download official version

Make your pen drive bootable

How to install

Puplets

Pendrive Linux

Before “Hello World!”

Are you having problems with java path when compiling java programs and you hate when you have to set path again and again? You should give the path to the bin for recognizing the jdk to the system. There is a simple thing you can do without typing the path in command prompt everyday. This is how you can do it in windows environment.Just six steps to follow

1)    Right click on my computer and select properties(or Open the Control Panel and double-click the System icon)
2)    Select the “Advanced” tab in system properties

3)    Select “Environment Variables” button
4)    Select “Path” in system variables box and click edit

5)    Now edit the variable value to the path of your java bin folder in jdk. Normally it is  C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_11\bin

6)    Now press ok(3times to exit from whole process)

You are ready to go. Now type javac in command prompt and see the result
This will appear if you done it correctly

Is Dialog HSDPA here to stay?

Things are not going well. Dialog HSDPA users having plenty of difficulties.While keeping almost all the old troubles, new ones are also coming.
No one is really getting so called 3.6mbps speed, instead we get 8KBps in the day time (peak hours) and 1mbps at night (off peak). Especially in this month all the Dialog users I know (HSDPA and Wimax) are in a hard times with IM and browsing. Some of my friends having this problem from the very beginning but I have this issue from this month. Same story from every where. All the users dropping from IM and go offline time to time. while my N70 displaying 100% 3G signal strength E220 modem keep changing signal levels to EDGE -> WCDMA -> HSDPA. If we didn’t use openDNS and accelerators we might not get anything. Now I use Nibuzz to chat, otherwise I’ll be always offline.

Apart from these technical issues, we have problems with billing information + usage counters. Considerable numbers of my friends are having problems with their broadband bill even with zero usage. One of my friends got an almost double valued bill for last month. Dialog telling that it was a mistake but now I have noticed that they do the same mistake again and again for considerable number of users. Added to that, they add your first 2 bills together and make you confused for the first month. I called their customer care unit and asked how to check usage online, they said me to register and check the detail bill. I did that but I didn’t find units I consumed on that detailed bill(actually their online method is not working). Because of all these, they better start new hotlines for these issues in their customer care unit and this is the time to change their motto too. Here is a suggestion.

While Dialog manages to stay with their faults, Mobitel comes back in game with amazing packages. Now they have reduced their rates to half and doubled the usage (bandwidth). In their survey I mentioned this since I was using M3 at the time and I’m really happy that they have actually listened to users.

Downlink              Uplink                     Rental                     Usage

1mbps                    1mbps                    Rs.490                    750MB

1mbps                    1mbps                    Rs.890                    2GB

3.6mbps                 1.96mbps               Rs.2490                  7GB

RS.5 for excess 10MB

In terms of speed Mobitel is in the lead since 3.6mbps they talk about is really 3.6 unlike Dialogs speeds. So now Dialog should listen to their customers or otherwise they will end up with the same result what they archived in GSM market base. Customers are your main asset. If you loose them, you will loose your company.

Download torrents using Dialog HSDPA

When you trying to download a torrent using your brand new Dialog HSDPA what it has given to you? A super speed downloads within seconds’ urrrrrrrrr I guess it is not. It is super slow just like a dialup isn’t it? Yes there is a damn reason behind it. Because simply, they have reduced your speed for downloading torrents. Just because torrents are heavily attack every user in the network by taking the whole bandwidth. But still we can do few simple things to get rid of this. You may want to know how?

Yes, it’s easy, do the following settings to your torrent downloading software

1) Go to preferences of your torrent downloading software and pick the “connection” tab and change the incoming port to “8080”

2) Go to bandwidth tab and change upload speed to “1” and download to “0” (0=unlimited)

3) Go to bit torrent tab and make encryption “forced”

Ok we have done it. These settings will only affect dialog HSDPA. I have not tested on wimax. Anyway the first 15-20 minutes will be very slow but later it will get better and you will get well over 160KBps. So you will be able to download a movie within 2-3 hours.

Here I am downloading two torrents with a great speed within very low upload: download ratio. But this will only happen if you have enough peers and seeds.

That’s coooool enough. But be mindful about your usage, because you have signed a FUP and they really cutting down the speed if you have exceeded the limits. That’s all about the torrents don’t blame your connection you can make it work!