Today I bought an HSDPA modem (ZTE MF628) designed by Moods of Norway. Three designs are available, and I chose ZTE Cocktail with blue tractors and pink cocktails (I guess that is how they party on Voss?). Who said that modems all should have the same horrible design? The three design got launched during the Oslo Fashion Week back in February this year.

Mobile Broadband - Moods of Norway

The modem is made by ZTE Corporation, an unknown company for us living in Norway, but it is China’s largest listed telecommunications manufacturer and wireless solutions provider. It can do downloads up to 7,2 Mbps.

Mobile Broadband - Moods of Norway

The installation of the modem’s straight forward as long as you install it for Windows XP/Vista. I didn’t manage to install it for Windows 7. It also comes with drivers for MacOS X, and it also reported to work with Linux (Ubuntu). The coolness dropped a little bit, when I saw the horrible user interface that came with the application that establishes the Internet connection. Fact is, I have never seen a good design for this simple kind of application. Mobile Connect looked ok, launch2net did not! I haven’t used the modem a lot, but it seems to be of a good quality. The modem also come with the possibility to read/write to Mini-SD card. Nice for people having digital compact camera with that kind of card reader.

Netcom ZTE

Hopefully a future version of the modem’s driver, let you do the dial up directly from Windows 7, without these funny/horrible looking 3rd party applications.