Hurricane Ian, SHTF, and internet... Tethered VS Cellular
Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2022 11:48 am
First off thank you Ador for the help and advice the other day! Let me tell you when you have a few oddball Toughbook related questions, it sure is nice to have a lifeline! ESPECIALLY one that I could reach without internet.
I am here in the midst of the aftermath of hurricane Ian, and realizing how important and useful having the internet can be. I needed to try and determine yesterday what road conditions in North Port were so we could go rescue Mum. Trees had fallen and she was blocked in her house with dwindling supplies, almost no food, no electricity, no backup plans, and not even running water... Sarasota had time to prepare as the more paranoid of us started in when a direct hit on Tampa was forecast. The cone was wide enough we knew we were still going to get pounded.
Then it shifted to a direct hit on us, but we still had time. And then with maybe 12hrs to landfall, it shifted South to the much more vulnerable Myakka area. They were completely unprepared. I was BAD here. In sheer size, this was one of the largest hurricanes reported. Charlie would have fit in just the eye of Ian. It was MASSIVE. When I zoomed out on the radar, you could see the tail of storms off of is extending all the way up the east cost, past Canada, and almost to the tip of Greenland. BTW I used the app MyRadar for this. It was awesome and with constant map updates that never seemed to be more than 5 minutes old. It was very reassuring to see where the storm was.
Anyways we were pretty well prepared, and while Sarasota got POUNDED, our preparations meant the house essentially came out unscathed. We got to Mum in apparently the very narrow window of 5-6hrs where things were almost manageable. The flooding was so bad. There was 7-8 miles in and out where it was over a foot deep. The closer we got to her hose, the worse it got. A block away it was a rushing current and easily 3' over the top of a little bridge crossing over a canal that runs behind her house. I had to do an emergency u-turn in our little Subaru and find another way in.
We were only there for maybe an hour doing some quick emergency clearing and cleanup so she could actually get out. This is when things got really dicey. The information I had said the road we had come in on was impassable, but that another road out wasn't. Local PD showed up as we were leaving, said a whole section of road was washed out with a river flowing over it where Google maps said was clear. The last part of how we had come in was pretty bad too, so they told us the other road out of the neighborhood was passable. It wasn't, and I watched 2 cars stall out so I had to do another rolling u-turn and then went back the way we had come in.
It was really bad getting back. A lifted truck decided to stop right in front of us as we are crossing another flow, to f-ing roll down his window to talk to somebody forcing us to stop in flowing water at least a foot deep. And everyone was driving retarded like that the whole way back.
Anyways we got her and her doggie home safely. Now the real chaos begins... -=sighs=- It was peaceful lol.
During the ordeal one thing I was longing for was stable internet. Currently I am on the Getac B300 and tethered to my iPhone. That actually is working fairly well. But yesterday tethered to the CF-31, didn't go well. The CF-31 is on W10, the B300 is on a broken W7 (it is screaming at me that it "might" not be genuine lol). Oh well apparently I am no longer connected. I have to constantly fiddle with the connection to keep it alive.
But I am definitely experiencing the "use case" for having a ruggedized laptop in s SHTF scenario. While I am fully powered up on a generator now, this B300 has over 9hrs of battery life. The CF-31 is pretty awesome too!
Here is where my real questions and lack of experience in this lie though.
1) The Tethered vs Cellular scenario. I would imagine the speeds to be comparable. But I also suspect that I will REMAIN connected with cellular where the tether drops out if I do something like write a long post... Or sit on Google Maps hoping to keep them live, but not actively doing other online tasks. If the cellular experience utilizing the Gobi or Sierra cards these all have is vastly improved on this current situation, I am probably sold on doing it!
2) Limited use... Realistically, I only "want" this in a very few scenarios. Maybe 2-3x a year. Power outages or internet ones are not uncommon in Florida. There might be once every 5-6yrs where a want becomes a potentially lifesaving genuine NEED. I am probably okay with some sort of limited pay as needed plan. The question is, can a burner style smart phone plan from say Walmart actually be used??? I get the whole different sizes of sim cards portion of it, but I don't know if the plan itself can be utilized.
3) How, transferable is a sim card? Can I swap one card into another laptop? Physically, easy. But will this work on the software side of things? I suspect this Getac and the CF-31 should be new enough to get the cards to work on multiple carriers. Ador was saying I could configure the CF-31 card in that manner. I need to see about my CF-19.
My plan WAS to put this Getac on Linux or W10. I defiantly have to at least fix windows on it. It is already blazing fast, and the processor is socketed so it is easy to even upgrade it significantly more. My CF-31 "ToughMac" attempt stalled. This would be a MUCH more powerful candidate to use, but the CF-31 is likely going to be easier. Plus I can readily get parts and already have extra HDD caddies... Cellular support is oddly written into OSX, but there are no WWAN hardware options
Whatever. I think the actual question here is:
4) Is the internet browsability vastly effected by W7 vs W10 vs Linux? For that matter would I even be able to easily use the cellular on linux? I suspect that out of the box uncontrolled, W10 is a MASSIVE background resource hog. If getting it under control is all I need to do to make it feel like this W7 machine...
I am here in the midst of the aftermath of hurricane Ian, and realizing how important and useful having the internet can be. I needed to try and determine yesterday what road conditions in North Port were so we could go rescue Mum. Trees had fallen and she was blocked in her house with dwindling supplies, almost no food, no electricity, no backup plans, and not even running water... Sarasota had time to prepare as the more paranoid of us started in when a direct hit on Tampa was forecast. The cone was wide enough we knew we were still going to get pounded.
Then it shifted to a direct hit on us, but we still had time. And then with maybe 12hrs to landfall, it shifted South to the much more vulnerable Myakka area. They were completely unprepared. I was BAD here. In sheer size, this was one of the largest hurricanes reported. Charlie would have fit in just the eye of Ian. It was MASSIVE. When I zoomed out on the radar, you could see the tail of storms off of is extending all the way up the east cost, past Canada, and almost to the tip of Greenland. BTW I used the app MyRadar for this. It was awesome and with constant map updates that never seemed to be more than 5 minutes old. It was very reassuring to see where the storm was.
Anyways we were pretty well prepared, and while Sarasota got POUNDED, our preparations meant the house essentially came out unscathed. We got to Mum in apparently the very narrow window of 5-6hrs where things were almost manageable. The flooding was so bad. There was 7-8 miles in and out where it was over a foot deep. The closer we got to her hose, the worse it got. A block away it was a rushing current and easily 3' over the top of a little bridge crossing over a canal that runs behind her house. I had to do an emergency u-turn in our little Subaru and find another way in.
We were only there for maybe an hour doing some quick emergency clearing and cleanup so she could actually get out. This is when things got really dicey. The information I had said the road we had come in on was impassable, but that another road out wasn't. Local PD showed up as we were leaving, said a whole section of road was washed out with a river flowing over it where Google maps said was clear. The last part of how we had come in was pretty bad too, so they told us the other road out of the neighborhood was passable. It wasn't, and I watched 2 cars stall out so I had to do another rolling u-turn and then went back the way we had come in.
It was really bad getting back. A lifted truck decided to stop right in front of us as we are crossing another flow, to f-ing roll down his window to talk to somebody forcing us to stop in flowing water at least a foot deep. And everyone was driving retarded like that the whole way back.
Anyways we got her and her doggie home safely. Now the real chaos begins... -=sighs=- It was peaceful lol.
During the ordeal one thing I was longing for was stable internet. Currently I am on the Getac B300 and tethered to my iPhone. That actually is working fairly well. But yesterday tethered to the CF-31, didn't go well. The CF-31 is on W10, the B300 is on a broken W7 (it is screaming at me that it "might" not be genuine lol). Oh well apparently I am no longer connected. I have to constantly fiddle with the connection to keep it alive.
But I am definitely experiencing the "use case" for having a ruggedized laptop in s SHTF scenario. While I am fully powered up on a generator now, this B300 has over 9hrs of battery life. The CF-31 is pretty awesome too!
Here is where my real questions and lack of experience in this lie though.
1) The Tethered vs Cellular scenario. I would imagine the speeds to be comparable. But I also suspect that I will REMAIN connected with cellular where the tether drops out if I do something like write a long post... Or sit on Google Maps hoping to keep them live, but not actively doing other online tasks. If the cellular experience utilizing the Gobi or Sierra cards these all have is vastly improved on this current situation, I am probably sold on doing it!
2) Limited use... Realistically, I only "want" this in a very few scenarios. Maybe 2-3x a year. Power outages or internet ones are not uncommon in Florida. There might be once every 5-6yrs where a want becomes a potentially lifesaving genuine NEED. I am probably okay with some sort of limited pay as needed plan. The question is, can a burner style smart phone plan from say Walmart actually be used??? I get the whole different sizes of sim cards portion of it, but I don't know if the plan itself can be utilized.
3) How, transferable is a sim card? Can I swap one card into another laptop? Physically, easy. But will this work on the software side of things? I suspect this Getac and the CF-31 should be new enough to get the cards to work on multiple carriers. Ador was saying I could configure the CF-31 card in that manner. I need to see about my CF-19.
My plan WAS to put this Getac on Linux or W10. I defiantly have to at least fix windows on it. It is already blazing fast, and the processor is socketed so it is easy to even upgrade it significantly more. My CF-31 "ToughMac" attempt stalled. This would be a MUCH more powerful candidate to use, but the CF-31 is likely going to be easier. Plus I can readily get parts and already have extra HDD caddies... Cellular support is oddly written into OSX, but there are no WWAN hardware options
Whatever. I think the actual question here is:
4) Is the internet browsability vastly effected by W7 vs W10 vs Linux? For that matter would I even be able to easily use the cellular on linux? I suspect that out of the box uncontrolled, W10 is a MASSIVE background resource hog. If getting it under control is all I need to do to make it feel like this W7 machine...
