Well I travelled down to Taunton in Somerset last night to Vanbitz, to get the Alden netmaster fitted. For £3,500 this is billed as the best commercially available molbile internet you can get without being a lottery winner.
I went off on my bike while they fitted it, it took most of the day for some reason. But they said I could hang around for the night to test it out if I wanted to. Given the history of disappointment I’ve had from Datastorm I said I’d do that. When I went to pay them they would not let me spend the £3, 250 owing, so I phoned Alliance and Leicester, knowing it was an unusual amount. They said over the phone that they could not fix it cos it was some kind of error lol. It took me four attempts and about 20 minutes to finally pay them.
Anyway, I tested it as best I could and it seemd to be quick and work fine. I really like the simplicity but I’d rather get off somewhere and test it properly so I prepared for an early start in the morning.
What a surprise, the Datastorm isn’t working.
PCmedix have rewired the entire system and refitted it and say they CAN make it work. They do inspire with confidence,although it also cost me £400.
I drove away from their unit and the satellite dish went up and locked on the first time. :)
Lets see how long it works for.
Well I’m having a fantastic time here in Llanberis, it’s a shame that the rig isn’t. It failed to connect yet again and Nick is now not answering his phone.
Thank God for the Vodafone USB modem! It was supposed to be a backup but it’s my main form of communication with the internet and work now!
So much for Ethnet ‘guaranteeing’ to make things work. The fact that they won’t answer the phone anymore kind of says they’ve given up on it.
So, I sold the LNB, the dish, the modem and the controller back to Isatlan for £1200 and Ethnet replaced them all for just under £1,000.
I now have the F1 mount and new dish, new LNB, DW7000 controller and the HN7000s Modem.
Nick, the engineer for Ethnet got it working straight away.
Fingers crossed.
Well I’ve been doing a bit of digging.
It turns out after speaking to Tim Gibbs in the US office of Datastorm, that my rig is indeed second hand and was well over a year old when Isatlan sold it to me as brand new.
Isatlan in that case conned me, ripped me off, duped me with false promises and statements. I’ve contacted trading standards to see what can be done.
In the meanwhile I’ve been in discussion with Barry Lieberman from Ethnet. He’s near Royston and is the main UK importer for equipment from Datastorm. He reckons that if I ‘sell’ back parts of the kit to Isatlan and buy new from him, he guarantees to get it working. So I emailed Isatlan and they’re up for it so that’s what’s happening.
It rained heavily today and it was ages before I sussed that the box Isatlan had fitted to the roof was leaking rain like a fucking torrent into my wardrobe!!
Those bastards!!
Well what a farce.
I met Musa and Chris from Isatlan and drove down to some unit they had. They spent most of the day fitting the datastorm to the roof whilst I mooched around a rather small and uninteresting town.
When I returned they had a problem. Although I had specifically asked what power requirements the equipment had and been told 12volt, what it really needs is 12volts from a mains charger!
Musa after a while went and found an inverter that was laying around and sold it to me for a tenner. Bloody bad show though not being prepared like that.
Not only that, but they had damaged the roof of the van and put a small dent in the side at the top. I never really got to attend to this as the eqipment wasn’t working anyway. We finally agreed that I would stay the night outside the unit and Musa would come in tomorrow and resolve whatever problem was there.
Disappointing to say the least.
Well I have final date for the datastorm to be fitted, 9th December.
£8,000 but, the freedom it affords is fantastic.
Anywhere in Europe I can connect at broadband speeds! I can’t wait!
Well this is exciting. I’ve booked the van to get satellite internet fitted in November.
From that day, I will truly be independent and be able to live in and work from the van.