Dell's EV-DO ExpressCard coming this week

ExpressCard-equipped laptop owners who have been patiently waiting to add cellular broadband to their rigs have finally been rewarded in the form of Dell's Wireless 5700 card, which will reportedly be available by the end of the week. Using Verizon's high-speed EV-DO network, the card -- which is a rebranded version of Novatel's Merlin XV620 -- offers theoretical speeds of up to 2.4Mbps, but in reality you should see somewhere between 500Kbps and 1Mbps -- still fast enough for most of your mobile browsing, gaming, and VoIP needs. Unfortunately for the Apple faithful, while the card will work in any Windows laptop with the proper slot, MacBook Pros won't be able to take advantage of 3G until the proper drivers are released. The Dell Wireless 5700 Mobile Broadband ExpressCard will sell for $179 -- which includes one free month of EV-DO service -- but after you get hooked, you'll have to shell out either $80 per month or $60 if you have a voice plan.

Update: Great news for Macheads. It seems that the just-released 10.4.7 update to OS X includes the necessary drivers to support this device, so start breaking out those credit cards, MacBook Pro owners.

[daschupa @ Jun 27th 2006 1:05PM]

Holy crap, is it just the picture or does that thing stick out 3 inches? It looks like an ashtray.

[Chris Green @ Jun 27th 2006 1:08PM]

Are there any PDAs that this will work with? Any way to use a EVDO data card (PCMCIA or ExpressCard) with a PDA or something "non-laptop"? Thanks!

[daaper @ Jun 27th 2006 3:41PM]

A lot of the newer smart-phones (most, if not all, that verizon sells) can use EVDO.

[daaper @ Jun 27th 2006 3:42PM]

nevermind, i read wrong...you weren't asking that

[daaper @ Jun 27th 2006 3:48PM]

try this:

http://www.psism.com/pca-cf.htm

[Nick @ Jun 27th 2006 3:49PM]

Couldn't this be the cause of the previous mysterious OS X drivers on Dell's website?? That would make total sense. Dell's not (entirely) dumb and has to know that a good portion of potential consumers for this product would be using a MacBook Pro.

[Ian Argent @ Jun 27th 2006 8:45PM]

Try this:

http://www.psism.com/pca-cf.htm

Posted at 3:48PM on Jun 27th 2006 by daaper [ ! ]
__________________________________________

This will NOT work for EVDO cards - they are 32-bit (and draw all the power that PC cards are allowed as well); the adapter only supports 16-bit.

[Jeremy @ Jun 28th 2006 2:35AM]

About that voip and gaming... You'll want to be looking at Verizon's terms of service: no games, no video, no voip, no webcams, no p2p, no "machine to machine" connections...

In fact, all you're really allowed to do is web browsing, email reading and connect home via a VPN.

[joseph @ Jul 1st 2006 1:20PM]

Anyone here with a MacBook Pro used this card yet? Can you recant your experiences with the card?

[Tom M @ Jul 31st 2006 9:43PM]

I think your MacBook pro Update is incorrect. Please see link below that states (Under Third Party:) that the Update 10.4.7 fixes the driver issue for Powerbook, not MacBook (Pro). I ordered one so I'll post a message letting you know my findings.

Quote:

"Adds support for Sierra wireless cards AirCard 580 (AC580), PC5220, and for the Novatel V620, S620, and U730 wireless cards for PowerBook computers."

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303771

The fact that Express Card/34 is taking so long to support is really irritating.