Filed under: Laptops, Wireless

A new variant of Asus’ M50Vm-A1 laptop — the M50Vm-A1WM — just showed up on Newegg and Amazon. Soulcrushingly long (mostly) alphanumeric string aside, it’s a decent 15.4” machine for its $1,399 price point, with desktop replacement specs: Intel Core 2 Duo P8400, 4GB of RAM, a GeForce 9600M with a satisfying 1GB of dedicated graphics memory, and even a numpad. What’s new here is onboard WiMAX, which puts Asus on the post-XOHM launch bandwagon with Toshiba, Acer and other laptop manufacturers. This is good news for some lucky early adopters, but if you’re not in one of the testing locales, you might as well continue twiddling your thumbs.

[Via ComputerMonger]

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Filed under: Laptops, Peripherals, Wireless

Yesterday was a pretty big day for Sprint (along with a number of laptop manufacturers), as America’s had its first major glimpse at widespread WiMAX. A few other tidbits lingering from the mayhem were the obligatory speed tests — which were decidedly average — and what’s believed to be a prototype Aspire One with inbuilt WiMAX capabilities. Said netbook was residing within an Intel-branded van, and while it wasn’t made clear if Acer had any plans of bringing such a beast to the commercial realm, the folks at Laptop found the WiMAX surfing to be respectable, but not mind-blowing, as the New York Times homepage took around 15 seconds to load completely. Mr. Dave Zatz was able to pull down around 4,600kbps (and 1,519kbps up) in an impromptu speed test, while Kevin over at jkOnTheRun only managed 3,435kbps down / 1,555kbps up. As always, YMMV.

Read - Hands-on with WiMAX-enabled Aspire One
Read - XOHM Speed Test I
Read - XOHM Speed Test II

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Filed under: Wireless

Hot on the heels of Lenovo comes Acer, which is somehow claiming “first!11one!” in the US market with WiMAX-enabled laptops. Introduced today in Baltimore in conjunction with the formal unveiling of Sprint’s XOHM network, the Aspire 4930-6862 and Aspire 6930-6771 both include the innate ability to hop on a WiMAX network and surf at 4G speeds. As for specs, the former packs a 14.1-inch WXGA panel, 2GHz Core 2 Duo T7350 CPU, 3GB of RAM, WiFi / WiMAX capability, integrated graphics, a dual-layer DVD writer, 320GB SATA HDD, 5-in-1 card reader, built-in webcam, Windows Vista Premium and an $899.99 sticker. The larger 6930 differs only in the 16-inch 1,366 x 768 resolution panel, as everything else (price included) remains the same. Charm City residents can snatch ‘em up right now at NewEgg and TigerDirect.

[Via DigitalTrends]

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Filed under: Laptops, Wireless

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Filed under: Wireless

Not too keen on snatching your WiMAX via ExpressCard? Fret not, as ZTE’s TU25 (which was leaked early last month) is fast approaching. Hailed as the only USB modem available (and certified, no less) for the launch of the XOHM network, the TU25 presumably allows users to plug it into a spare USB port, wave a magic wand and begin surfing the mobile broadband superhighway in Baltimore (and a few other places, we hear). There’s a frighteningly small amount of details on this thing right now, but hopefully we’ll have some of the more crucial aspects (price, release date, etc.) sooner rather than later.

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Filed under: Wireless

Flying out of BWI to Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. or Northern Virginia? Make sure you pack in that SWC-E100, because we’re hearing that Sprint’s XOHM WiMAX networks are already live in each of those locales. According to a XOHM representative at a booth in Baltimore, the networks in each of those cities are already up, though they aren’t officially supported as they’re still “being tested.” If any of you XOHM early adopters happen to head to any of the previously mentioned regions, bust out your ExpressCard and see if you get lucky (and then let us know how it goes).

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Filed under: Wireless

XOHM is live in Baltimore, and Laptop Magazine has sent a few (slightly dazed-looking) staffers on an impromptu tour of the “Charm City” to get a feel for Sprint’s new WiMAX service. Overall, they found performance to be quite good, clocking in at 3.05 Mbps down and 2.4 Mbps up. That compares very favorably to Verizon’s EV-DO network, which delivered 1.43 Mbps down and 0.54 Mbps up in the same locations. Sprint’s network also beats Clearwire’s WiMAX down in Reno both in speed and in connectivity; testers in the Biggest Little City in the World couldn’t get a signal while in a car, but those in Baltimore could, albeit at half the speed as when stationary. So, it certainly sounds like a good solution for those who need a high-speed connection on the go — so long as they’re only going to places within Baltimore, of course.

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Filed under: Wireless

Sprint may have just launched the XOHM WiMAX network in Baltimore, but would-be merger partner Clearwire has been running its version of the mobile broadband service in Reno for a while, and InfoWorld went down to test it out and give us a taste of what to expect. Performance was good while not in motion, with downloads speeds around 1.5 to 2.0 Mbps and uploads hitting 275 to 325Kbps, but actually getting mobile broadband seems to be out of the question — the system simply couldn’t connect to a laptop moving in a car or on a train. That seems like a dealbreaker to us, but we’ll give it a pass for now since it’s so early in the game — we’ll see if Sprint can do better.

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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

In an apparent effort to make good on its claim of having WiMAX rolling in Baltimore this month, Sprint is reportedly going live with the service in the downtown area today. There’s no indication of when it’ll spread XOHM throughout Charm City, but we’re hearing that prices will start at $10 for a 24-hour unlimited pass and $35 for monthly service. Best of all, there won’t be any contracts necessarily attached, and WiMAX-friendly laptop cards will supposedly start at around $45. For any locals able to actually find one of these so-called aircards and hop on this elusive XOHM network today, be sure and let us know how it goes.

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Filed under: Wireless

Back in June, we heard that Sprint would be going live with its XOHM WiMAX service in Baltimore, um, this month. As of today, it’s pretty clear that the service won’t be rolled out fully before October dawns, but at least some progress is being made. Based on a survey sent out to select (read: lucky) Baltimore-area residents, it seems that Intel and Sprint are willing to give away free laptops in order to trial the XOHM service in the city. Unfortunately, the lappies won’t even be given out until late October, and the trial itself is set to last 30 days, so frankly, we’ll be lucky to see XOHM hit the general populace before Santa takes to the friendly skies. Though, why are we not surprised?

[Thanks, Anonymous]

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Filed under: Wireless

Sprint’s XOHM WiMAX network is finally due out this month in the launch market of Baltimore, with Chicago and DC to follow, and the company is already working on the next phase of the rollout, which will bring the high-speed wireless service to Boston, Philadelphia, and Dallas-Fort Worth. Sprint says it’s already started installing WiMAX equipment in those three cities and that it’s a “month ahead of schedule,” but given the delays getting XOHM up and running in Baltimore, we’re not exactly certain the “schedule” really matters. Still, it’s good to hear that XOHM is growing up — now launch, already.

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Filed under: Wireless

A little URL hacking by Engadget fan Leo, has revealed Sprint’s new My Xohm site and loads of service information. The site is clearly in a preparatory state with plenty of dead links and Latin dummy-text holding the pre-launch site format together. Nevertheless, there is quite a bit of detail here, some of which is certainly more than just idle filler. For example, based on the current text, we can expect the following at service launch in September:

• Nokia’s N810 WiMAX Edition — looks like a lock based on the liberal use of its image (above) across the pages.
• XOHM USB (ZTE’s TU25) modem.
• XOHM Express Card (Samsung’s SWC-E100) modem with optional PCMCIA adapter.
• XOHM Modem (ZyXel’s MAX-206M2) Ethernet hub / router with optional 4-hour battery — unfortunately, XOHM will not offer static IP addresses at this time.
• The XOHM portal (whatever that is) supports both Windows and OS X. However, the modems listed above and Sprint’s XOHM Connection Manager software are PC-only, sorry Mac owners.

Unfortunately, we can’t find any specific pricing information but the site does tell us that access will be sold by the day or by the month without binding contracts or cancellation fees. It also promises speeds between 2-4Mbps for downloads and 1-3Mbps for uploads. Not sure that’s worth the move to Baltimore but it’s certainly given us cause to pause at the thought. See the modems pictured after the break.

[Thanks, Leo S.]

Read — General Support FAQ
Read — Pricing and Speed
Read — My Xohm
Read — Devices

Continue reading Sprint leaks XOHM WiMax service details and devices

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Filed under: Wireless

Sprint’s oft-delayed XOHM service is finally about to go live, ready to launch in Baltimore sometime next month ahead of Chicago and D.C. later this year. We already know about the potential joys of city-wide 4G access, so Sprint is taking this opportunity to talk up “geobrowsing,” uLocate-based functionality that enables WiMax surfers to get location-specific info on traffic, events, and weather, provided by third-parties like Google and NAVTEQ. With Sprint offering profit sharing and a free API to partners, expect that list to grow quickly if XOHM takes off. What Sprint is not yet offering are the specific pricing details for consumers, but day passes have been confirmed along with longer-term contracts, all able to extended to include multiple devices if you’re suitably endowed.

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Filed under: Wireless

In a press release today, Sprint and Samsung “declared” that mobile WiMAX technology is “now ready for commercial service.” Sounds exciting right? Well, it’s kind of like saying that a car is “ready to drive” — you still can’t do much without the keys and a road. Since Sprint has seen recent delays, litigation, and various other forms of badness, this does kind of come off as an empty PR move. Nevertheless, they want to let everyone know that XOHM has “met Sprint’s rigorous commercial acceptance criteria including overall performance, handoff performance and handoff delay.” Honestly, we hope it gets off the ground soon — we’ve got a pile of WiMAX N810’s here we need to fire up.

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Filed under: Wireless

It’s April, do you know where your WiMax service is? Unfortunately, S.Korea as Sprint backtracks on the planned April launch of its commercial Xohm service in the US. This according to an official company spokesman. Sprint says that the launch has been delayed to “later in the year” which many expect to be as early as summer. Even then we’re likely only talking about Chicago, Baltimore, and D.C. areas. Time to start making room for LTE in our sad, jaded hearts.

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Filed under: Handhelds, Wireless

Having trouble telling the difference between this and a garden-variety N810? Yeah, don’t worry about it — that’s okay, and it’s actually by design. We had an opportunity to tool around with Nokia’s just-announced N810 WiMAX Edition today, and it stays very true to the original N810’s formula, substituting a darker case and keyboard (both of which look very handsome, by the way), and physically, that’s about it. The real magic happens deep within this thing’s innards, where the addition of a WiMAX radio keeps things speedy when WiFi hotspots are out of reach and Bluetooth tethering to a 3G phone is too much of a hassle. The software necessary to support XOHM activation isn’t complete yet, but Nokia’s reps tell us that the process of signing up for WiMAX service will be seamless and entirely doable from the N810 itself — no pesky phone calls or visits to a store necessary. They likened it to purchasing hotel internet service; there’ll probably be hourly, daily, or continuous subscriptions available, making it possible to only shell out XOHM coin when the situation demands it. It works just like any other data connection on the device, too, so getting your wide-area broadband on is pretty much as painless as it could possibly be. Check out some shots (including a side-by-side with the original N810) in the gallery!

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Filed under: Laptops, Wireless

Not too long ago, we gave you loyal Cloudbook owners a chance to voice your opinion on how you’d change things. Fast forward a few weeks, and take a gander at what Everex has put together. Debuting today at CTIA 2008, the Cloudbook MAX not only boasts an 8.9-inch WVGA (1,024 x 600) display, Windows Vista, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, integrated GPS receiver, 2-megapixel webcam and a battery good for four hours, but it also features an 80GB HDD, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, audio in / out and an S-Video output. Beyond all that, this thing gets energized by a 1.6GHz VIA C7-M ULV processor coupled with the VX800 digital media IGP chipset, which touts full DirectX 9 support and video acceleration for MPEG-2, MPEG-4, WMV9, VC1 and DivX video formats (plus a VMR-capable HD video processor, among other things). Lastly, the unit includes built-in support for Sprint’s XOHM WiMAX network. Brimming with excitement yet? Start stocking that piggy bank — this currently unpriced rig will be available in the latter half of this year across North America.

Read - VIA and Everex demonstrate Cloudbook MAX at CTIA
Read - VIA VX800 Series Chipset

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Filed under: Handhelds

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Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Assuming Sprint can make it — and that’s starting to seem like kind of a big if these days — CEO Dan Hesse made some comments about the coming 4G revolution, including one auspicious hint about dual-mode CDMA / WiMAX devices this later year for XOHM. It’s almost an exciting enough concept for us to forget that even if these devices were forthcoming in 2008, they’d still only be for one of the soft launch markets, and would probably start as a data cards — not phones. But hey, we’re happy to be proven wrong, Sprint.

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Filed under: Wireless

Ready for untethered 3Mbps to 5Mbps downloads and 1Mbps to 1.5Mbps upload speeds while on the go? Us too, especially our Chicago-based brethren waiting for Sprint to properly soft-launch their Xohm service onto the nation. Backed by 50 or so WiMax exhibits with product on display at Mobile World Congress, Sprint’s VP for technology development, Ali Tabassi, assured us that April would indeed see the fledgling Xohm service soft launch into Chicago, Baltimore, and the DC areas. However, he conceded that the billions required to reach the goal of 100 million subscribers by year end have not been approved. Sprint would however at least cooperate with Clearwire — a former Xohm partner — on roaming agreements so that the two don’t duplicate coverage. Come on Sprint, we know it’s been tough for you lately as you bleed subscribers (and profits). But if you build it, we will come back.

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