Wireless and Cable Free - Part I:
NTT DoCoMo Mobile Card P-in Review
http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/products/phs/lineup/p-in/

Let's face it most product reviews can be done in two words: "It sucks!" or "it's great!" So let me cut to the quick here, "The Mobile Card P-in is GREAT!"

Now that's done, I could end here, but won't. Probably some will continue reading and want to know what is so great about it or why it doesn't suck. Or even what it is.

Recently I have been asking myself why I even bother to review products in the newsletter or our newsgroups. What could I possibly gain from it? What is it in me that makes me want to educate everyone? I came to a few conclusions:

(1) I want to create more educated buyers and users so that there will be more of a demand for quality products in the future and maybe the crap will start to disappear. Not likely... It's an uphill battle.

(2) If more people use what I think is good I will get some feedback and maybe even find something better. This happens a lot. And I am the first to cut my losses and move on to something better.

(3) My writing adds value to the TPC and this will somehow come back to me. (It has, but I won't get into that here.) Maybe in my next life.

Well, if you don't live in Japan, you may want to stop reading right now. This thing is a PC Card (PCMCIA) that works in Japan (1) as a 64k PHS modem/phone or (2) with an included cable and your NTT DoCoMo keitai as a 9600bps modem.

PHS: To use it as a PHS phone you need a headset and must dial with your notebook's mouse or keyboard, so I won't even talk about that. I got it for data only. I was given a phone number, but don't even remember or care what it is.

The data standard or protocol that it uses for PHS is called PIAFS. You will sometimes see the 64K logo and hear it described as 64k, but the actual transfer rate is 58.4kbps. Still beats your 56k (V.90) modems, which I think only upload at 33.6kbps.

If your provider doesn't support the 64k standard you may have to add '#32' at the end of the phone number in your dialup network settings to force it to connect at the lower rate. Red and green lights will flash on the part of the card that sticks out of the PC Card slot to tell you what rate you are connected at.

A floppy disk containing an .INF file was included in the box, but wasn't required during the install. This amazed me as I am using English Windows 2000 Pro on my IBM ThinkPad 600. The web site only mentioned Win9x. I was up and running within 5 minutes with just a glance at the manual. Win2k recognized it as a 'Standard PCMCIA Card Modem' and took care of the rest. I am pretty sure that a reboot wasn't even necessary.

Keitai: This was as easy to set up as the PHS part of it. I just plugged in the cable and let it rip. I knew that something had to be different in the DUN settings to force it to use the keitai port and found it very quickly. Finding #9600 in there to be added after the phone number wasn't hard.

When to use which? I can sum this up by telling you to use it as a PHS modem when you can. It's cheaper per minute and 58.4 is better than 9.6. I have used it with my keitai just 3 times. Once when testing from my house, once on the shinkansen and most recently in a hotel room in Kyoto where the PHS reception was so bad I could only connect when holding my ThinkPad near the window.

When did it come out? It's been out since some time last year. I wrote about it in our newsgroups last September and a friend bought a few for his company and reported good results. I didn't rush to get it as my provider didn't support the 64k standard at the time and my 32k (phone + PC Card adapter) version was working just fine.

When I did decide to buy around February this year, it was nowhere to be found. I must have checked 30 stores and 10 DoCoMo shops. NTT in Ikebukuro was going to sell me one for 20,000+ Yen, but I wasn't that desperate.

So how much is it? I guess this information should have been up above as it is the first thing that many want to look at... Anyway, I paid 6,680 Yen at Bic Camera. I had seen it for less at other places, but they just didn't have it in stock.

I have found that most things I have bought are either worth many times what you paid or nothing at all. This thing changes the way you think about getting online. I'd have forked over a lot more if I had to.

Drawbacks: Well, besides the cost of the card itself, you have to pay NTT for connecting and no one likes to do that. Like 3 years ago before I got my OCN line, I have learned to get on and offline quickly. And people passing jokes and photos around has started to annoy me again.

One advantage my 32k phone had over this was that you could just turn it on. look at the reception bars on the display and know if you were in PHS range. I haven't read the manual and don't plan to, but the only way I can see if I can get online is by trying. I have had great luck with the thing, even getting online in places that I wouldn't have expected.

Finally, once or twice thing has started to beep. I think it was telling me that I was losing the signal. Who knows. Maybe someone reading will buy one and figure these things out. Hopefully they will email me and pay me back for staying up all night to write this.

Is this for you? Who knows. I have owned my NTT DoCoMo keitai for over 4 years and had no plans to dump it. Want to keep my number and the 12% discount I get for having had it for so long. And if I put the keitai and PHS on the same bill and let them do the direct bank withdrawal, I think can qualify for some family discount. (Haven't done so, yet.)

I didn't look to hard at the other PHS or keitai data options from other companies. Sorry. You are welcome to do so and write about it here.

If you do go for the P-in, you will want to look at the different rate structures and choose the right plan for you. I chose the DataPlus plan for 1,980 Yen per month, which includes 1000 Yen in data connections. I think I read that voice calls will cost 3x the regular rate under this plan, but as I said above, I never plan to use it as a phone.

I have found that I bring my notebook with me more and that by leaving the card in the notebook and leaving it in suspend mode I can pop the thing open and get online and off very quickly.

More to come? Sure. I just bought the new Nokia imode phone. So far, so good. I have only had it for a few days. Love the bilingual display. And with the infrared port I should be able to connect to the Net with my PalmPilot. Still working on it. That will be Part II; maybe next month. And Part III of this wireless series will be my planned wireless LAN purchase, but I can't afford that yet.

There is one more wire that I would like to get rid of and that is the one from the power outlet to the notebook. If you are in the market for a notebook computer, trust me when I say you should take a good look at the battery life. It matters.