At other times, we saw peak speeds of 1.9Mb/s. The Ovation certainly indicated we were in an HSDPA zone, but we were unable to measure a download speed anywhere near 7.2Mb/s.Äownloading a 7MB music file took 55.4s, an average data transfer rate of 1.01Mb/s, though Novatel's software displayed a maximum speed of 1.73Mb/s. Vodafone's HSDPA network is supposed to be running at 7.2Mb/s in certain areas, including around Vulture Central's London eyrie. The MC950D's software is basic but usable All HSDPA links are yellow, so there's no simple way to see from the modem whether you're connecting at 1.8Mb/s, 3.6Mb/s or 7.2Mb/s. It's a nice idea, but the colour-blind might have a job separating one colour from another, and the rest of may not fare much better because some of the colours are quite similar. There's a single, small panel on the face of the Ovation that lights up in different colours to tell you what technology you're able to connect with - green for GPRS, yellow for HSDPA, mid-blue for HSUPA and so on. Installing the drivers is straightforward, and we were up and running in moments, connecting initially to Vodafone's 3G network. So far the Mac drivers only go up to Tiger, though they apparently will run under Leopard, albeit with some issues (PDF). Novatel Wireless supplies drivers for the Mac on an accompanying CD, but the PC-oriented software auto-runs off the modem itself. We tried the Ovation out first on a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.4.11 and then on a Windows XP SP2 machine - an Eee PC, to be precise. So it's got all your cellular connectivity options taped, unless you really feel the need to dial up over a GSM voice connection. If it needs to drop back to Edge or GPRS, it supports the quad-band frequencies of 850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz and 1900MHz. The MC950D can connect on three HDSPA bands: 850MHz, 1900MHz and 2100MHz. Incidentally, the USB cable is double-headed, to draw all the power the Ovation needs when it's connected to a USB 1.1-only machine. And, we'd add, to help with cooling - the Ovation gets darned hot. The presence of the screen clip suggests you may need to move the Ovation around to get the best reception. Novatel Wireless' Ovation MC950D: easy HSDPA connectivity
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