From today's Houston Chronicle business section.
Jan. 31, 2003, 12:01AM
DR. MAC
Billing horror story could happen to you, too
TODAY'S column isn't Mac-only. In fact, this story could happen to anyone, regardless of gender, age, sex or
computing platform.
So the information below could save even Windows users hundreds, or thousands, of dollars.
It all began with my Sony Ericsson T68i wireless phone, a Bluetooth-enabled marvel that works beautifully with
and without my Mac.
Because it's got Bluetooth, I can use it as a cellular modem, which caused all my troubles. You see, I thought it
sounded so very cool that I got myself software that makes the connection faster -- Mobile High Speed for
Mac OS X from Nova Media at www.novamedia.de -- and put it to the test during my trip to Macworld Expo.
My hotel in San Francisco offered Ethernet-based Internet access for $10.95 a day or $44.95 a week.
I giggled as I connected to the Internet from my room via wireless phone and downloaded a day's worth of
e-mail: about 200 messages.
But even with Mobile High Speed, that took over 40 minutes. So I concluded that wireless Internet connections
were cool, but fast Internet connections were cooler. Using the phone to connect was still too slow for anything
but emergencies, so I abandoned the experiment and paid for a week of high-speed Ethernet.
It's a darn good thing I did, because that one connection, downloading a whopping seven megabytes of mail --
mostly spam -- cost me $226.80.
At first I thought there must be some mistake, but AT&T wouldn't budge. A 40-minute Internet connection via
AT&T Wireless costs more than my phone, more than four months of high-speed cable modem (or DSL)
service and roughly as much as an entire year of AOL.
AT&T said my plan included Internet usage billed at 3 cents per megabyte. Three cents a meg I could live with.
The actual price, though, is 3 cents a kilobyte, or roughly $30 per megabyte. The AT&T customer service rep
even said, "megabyte" when she meant, "kilobyte," and not just once, but twice. Even so, the best they would
offer was to split the cost with me.
The moral of this story is that you should read the fine print or you will pay for it later. Put another way, I paid
$113.40 for a mailbox full of spam so you won't have to.
By the way, to add insult to injury, the AT&T customer service rep ended our conversation by offering me
promotional packages with up to 4 megabytes of Internet access per month for $12.99 or up to 10 megabytes a
month for $29.99. While I don't expect to use the phone as a wireless modem much in the future, I bought the
$12.99 deal anyway, just in case.
P.S.: Apple just announced a new 20-inch flat-panel Cinema display; price reductions on the 23-inch Cinema
HD and 17-inch Studio flat-panel displays (from $3,499 to $1,999, and $999 to $699, respectively); and an
improved lineup of Power Mac G4s with faster processors, FireWire 800 and support for AirPort Extreme and
Bluetooth. As usual, I'll cover them in more detail once I've spent some quality hands-on time with them. |
