MDA Compact/M500 & GPRS advice

[Guest scoobysi]

Hi folks

I'm brand new to this forum (v. good by the way) and smartphones in general. I'm thinking about buying an MDA Compact or M500 but I'm unsure as to GPRS costs.

I'd say I'm likely to be a low phone & data user i.e. I'll use the PDA functionality at work much more.

The lowest cost of ownership for me that I've found is at Smartcom with the MDA Compact @ £29.99 with £15ppm U-Fix contract. However, I've been told that I can't add data bundles with U-Fix and at 0.75p p/kb or £7.50 p/Mb the data cost sounds expensive.

Can anyone give me an idea as to how much data is used during a session, for instance if I logged onto the BBC news site and read a dozen or so stories how much data would that be? How much surfing will I be able to do for e.g. £5 pm?

Yours confused.

Si

PS. I'l probably get a Wi-Fi card as well.

Edited July 24, 2005 by scoobysi

[Guest MitchellO]

If you logged onto the BBC site, you would probably use 1Mb fairly quickly. You would need to turn the pics off or you would be spending way more than you want.

[Guest scoobysi]

Hmmmnn I feared as much :cry:

Looks as though the most cost effective way to surf is to find a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Si

[Guest MitchellO]

Yeah, unless you get like a 10-15mb, unlimited or whatever dataplan it can be quite costly.

[Guest Xenzo1990]

Gone are the days where orange gave unlimited GPRS with orange world for 6 pounds a month.

[Guest paddy_mcnulty]

If you want to use BBC website and a some other 'big' websites most of them have created versions of websites for mobile devices, eg www.bbc.co.uk/mobile (i think, or is pda at end, not sure as it's in my favorates). Also, make sure that pictures and sounds are switched off.

Anyway, I have a 4Mb deal on Orange (£4 pm) and surf the BBC news site(text only version) everyday and look at MoDaCo and other sites and very rarely get up to 4Mb.