When the iPad was announced available in a wifi only version, I took the opportunity to go to the verizon and sprint stores and check out the Mifi device. To get an Internet connection for the iPad, my MacBook air, and my iPhone, for $60, over the $30 for AT&T’s lacklustre service, was a tempting tempting thing.

I got great service from Brandon Andrews(who I recommend you go see) at the van ness sprint store, that was passionate and informative, more so than the verizon store across the street, and he gave me a good deal, plus an offer I couldn’t refuse, take the mifi today, use it for a week till the next gen level overdrive comes into stock and I can just switch them out. And I was sold, I took the miff home, took it sound town for two weeks, measuring bandwidth on it’s connection vs AT&T on the iPhone, using the excellent ookla speed test app, and the mifi won each time.

Two weeks later, I took it in to sprint and took the overdrive device instead of the mifi, which does about the same, but has the capability to use the 4g network if it ever arrives..

The overdrive is an interesting device, a little buggy, as most non apple tech i’ve used is(btw, I was non apple up to 2003), but has neat features, like a mini lcd display, a microsd slot for providing nas(network attached storage), a provided USB to micro USB cable(that the mifi cheeps out on), a power adaptr that is simply a USB power adapter(a la apple iPod/iPad/iPhone chargers).

Recently, I’ve been reconsidering my Overdrive, and seriously been considering buying out my contract on Sprint, why? because the iPad has been becoming more and more important to me in my day to day, and so, I’d gotten to thinking, hey, an unlimited(do you get that? an unLIMITED) ipad data account is only $30, it seems like thats all you need, it’s all your movies(netflix/iTunes), music, podcasts, wikipedia you can eat, for just $30, versus $60 for an overdrive which is awesome, but perhaps unneccessary,

Good points:
The sprint overdrive gets a signal often superior to At&t 3G, both strength and bandwidth wise.

The overdrive comes with a 5gb data cap on 3G, unlimited data(truly) on 4g and, unlimited on 3G if you know the right guys at sprint.

I have the overdrive set to stay awake while in use, if it goes asleep, it wakes up in maybe twenty seconds at most.

However it works, GPS on iPhone and iPad is accurate through the overdrive.

Bad points.

The battery runs down