Disclaimer I am a Kansas City Real Estate Agent, not an IT professional. Since I am located in Overland Park with the Sprint headquarters I thought I would give this product a try. It says virgin but it runs over the sprint 3g data network. That network is pretty good in KC. Plus, being pay as you go, I can use it in the busy months, as a fill in for those times I am at a client’s home, or if I need to write a contract in a restaurant or just want to sit some where to get work done.
I purchased it at the local Best Buy. The sales person Mark really was great. No bs just told me what I needed to know and sent me on my way. Thanks Mark!
First computer to try to install it on was a dell latitude d630, vista home basic, then a Dell 4300 w/ XP pro, and then a gateway netbook with Vista. After 3 hours I got it working on the first computer. Plugged in the chip like it said, it ran trying to install hardware, could not find driver it failed. Went to Virgin site. Could not find driver there. Did not want to call at 10pm at night.
It recognized the Virgin card and the micro sd drive and sometimes would recognize the usb drive where the virgin software was stored. But when you click on the virgin drive it would disconnect it.
Finally after trying various other things, I kept pluggin in the card, opening it under my computer, then when you see the virgin software drive, right click on in and select open. DO NOT TRY INSTALL it will just disconnect the drive again. Then when it is open and you can see the files. On two computers I was able to run the “Install” on the third I had to run the “Lite”. Not sure why that worked.
After you get the software installed it forces you to the Virgin site to buy time. Which is very slow.
IMPORTANT TIPS – Go to your firewall, and block all internet activity. You would be amazed how many little useless programs are drawing bandwidth. Also, turn off windows update. Also, disable all your little browser add-ons. They are nearly all drawing bandwidth constantly. Especially things like faster fox and delicious.
After that, the card seems to work just fine. We are headed out on a road trip. I’ll let you know.
THINGS THAT DID NOT WORK
Tried installing my old sprint card since it was the same. It installed perfectly. I then tried the Virgin card to see if Vista would use the Sprint card driver for the Virgin. It did not. Don’t bother.
Next, went to the Novatel wireless site and downloaded drivers. Then installed them. Seemed to work a little but again don’t bother.
