Acer Aspire One running Windows XP Home
BB Storm 9530 on Verizon Wireless
Generic $3 eBay blue-tooth adapter
Operating in the Twin Cities, MN area
USB: works 1mbps down, .20mbps up
BT: works .70mbps down, .20mbps up (same speed as the USB link while at the inlaws in northern Minnesota)
The blue-tooth speed is perfectly fine in my opinion, Its fast enough for what I need it for and slow enough to discourage bandwidth abuse. The only thing I don't like is the fact that it has to "spool up". Every time that you load a page, the transfer rate will start slow and exponentially pickup speed until it hits its limit.
Also there seems to be an issue with the USB link, it can be hit or miss sometimes but it often likes to get stuck at 3 packets sent and 0 received. Sometimes if I "bump" it with the BB browser it will start working, other times it wont. This while mildly annoying inst critical but a fix would be appreciated.
If a new feature were to be added, I would have to suggest an "autodetect" mode for both USB and BT. If this feature were enabled it would start with the BB at powerup and in Windows, it would constantly be "hunting" for a connection in both tether modes until it finds one. If disconnected it would go right back into the hunting mode again until the programs are forced to shutdown. This would be a make or break option for some buyers and defiantly set Tether above the competition.
Start Tether on your BB and install the update.
Also,
Depending on your dongle, you will see different speeds. Version 1.2 transfers at 1 Mbit/s where as Version 2.0 + EDR transfers at 3 Mbit/s.
1 Mbits/s = 1,048,576 bits per second. The equivalent speed in bytes is (1,048,576/8=131,072) 131,072 which also equals 131 Kilobytes, because it takes 8 bits to make a byte.
At 1 Mbit/s you will only see a maximum of 131kbs. You also need to take in account range and interference. Depending on how far away from the host device you are and how many other devices are in the area, you can still expect anywhere from 30Kbps to 131kbps download speed at 1 Mbit/s (BT v1.2)
Thats still only 8 seconds to download a 1Mb file on the old v1.2 standard! I highly doubt anyone needs anymore bandwidth than that while on the go.