I have turned into a hardened pessimist and whenever I hear the name Reliance hair on the back of my neck stands-up. The same feeling you get when you are facing a ghost on the deserted road(dont ask me how many times I have seen a ghost, for that matter).
It so happened I religiously keep away from certain companies like Reliance, Tata Indicom etc. But this time because of the circumstances I had only one option to get a broadband connectivity. That was Reliances new USB based, 3.1Mbps, CDMA broadband. The marketing guy as usual, came and gave a lot of gyan on whats so unique and how good their service so far been. I viewed him in all possible angles to see if he has some horns growing. But any way since I was already fixated on Reliance(because of lack of options) I went for this product.
The risk was rs3200/- which I had to pay to take the connection. The monthly rental of 1500 with national roaming was not too bad. So finally I went ahead and got one. A ZTE black USB modem. Cute and small.(But within a week of purchase they changed this model to a still cuter white modem).
Then came the best part, and lots of surprise. The damn thing worked.:) Its been giving me very good bandwidth so far, especially on download. I have been watching Streaming videos of IPL without any hitch. The speed test showed 440Kbps(well dont expect the 3.1mbps). Its able to dowload large files without much hickup. For a change, its really good.
On the downside, I am not sure if its the problem with the device, the OS(microsoft XP) has become unstable. its shuts down more freequently.(Well, MS itself is no great product). Sometimes the machine refuses to recognise the device. Then it has to removed and re-plugged again. But the most important problem so far: The battery life. Its dropped quite signifcantly. I used to work around 2hrs on battery. Now its hardly 1 hour with Reliance. Prob its taking more power to increase the RF signals.
Nett-Nett its a good deal