A lot of people on this site seem to make the incorrect assumption that prices are based on cost in some way. They're not, prices are based on what people are willing to pay. Of course for commodities what people are willing to pay tends to fall in line with costs, but mobile broadband isn't a commodity just yet. For your example, people are willing to pay more to use their laptop on a cell network then their phones. Thus the higher prices.
I run OSMAnd on a cheap Android phone. It stores the maps on the SD card, so you don't need a data plan to use it. Very useful when travelling (international data is stupidly expensive), and when you are in the places where you are most likely to want GPS - away from the mobile network.
With the costs for fast connections constantly dropping
It's not the backhaul they're concerned about as much as the spectrum. Each tower can have only so many Mbps going through it for each MHz that a carrier owns.
It's not like they aren't making enough, and have had several years now, to upgrade their towers.
Conventional wisdom is that NIMBYs make it hard to put up more towers.
I wish I could get Windows 7 to let me access it for programming / debugging (it's apparently an involved process)
So you're trying to get the Android Debug Bridge to work, but it's "an involved process" to find properly signed drivers for it because Microsoft's anti-rootkit strategy relies on end users not being able to act as their own CA for signing kernel-mode drivers. Does installing Xubuntu make it any easier?
I'm going to wait until someone makes a compiler for Android for the various languages I like
It's not a compiler, I'll grant, but there is SL4A.
Re:Quick Tethering Quiz (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who needs smartphones (Score:4, Informative)
Spectrum is scarce (Score:4, Informative)
With the costs for fast connections constantly dropping
It's not the backhaul they're concerned about as much as the spectrum. Each tower can have only so many Mbps going through it for each MHz that a carrier owns.
It's not like they aren't making enough, and have had several years now, to upgrade their towers.
Conventional wisdom is that NIMBYs make it hard to put up more towers.
I wish I could get Windows 7 to let me access it for programming / debugging (it's apparently an involved process)
So you're trying to get the Android Debug Bridge to work, but it's "an involved process" to find properly signed drivers for it because Microsoft's anti-rootkit strategy relies on end users not being able to act as their own CA for signing kernel-mode drivers. Does installing Xubuntu make it any easier?
I'm going to wait until someone makes a compiler for Android for the various languages I like
It's not a compiler, I'll grant, but there is SL4A.