Reviewing the Cricket Um185 Broadband Modem

By Paul | Oct 19, 2009

So I got the Modem and wanted to test out the speed being stationary, So I go to my usual site Speedtest.net look at the speed, check below for speed.
As you can see this went fairly well. It does depend on your Cricket Coverage area. So you want to hear all about it.

First thing if you are upgrading from the UM100 Broadband Card, You’ll want to uninstall the Quicklink Software. To do that you can uninstall it by going to:

Computer > C: Drive > Program Files > Cricket > Quicklink > UNWISE.EXE

(This will uninstall the Quicklink software, I’d suggest after you uninstall it you reboot.)

Install the UM185 Software and Drivers:

As you can see the Cricket Um185 Broadband Modem, Has a little more installation process and requires a little more time. It however has all the software necessary to run smoothly with Vista.

Speedtest For Cricket Um185 Modem:

Looks to be about the same with the A600 Modem that Cricket has. The speed is comparable with the rest of Cricket Broadband modems. I used 359919 – Pantech Duo C810 Cell Phone Antenna Adapter Cable with the ARC-FR0803R30 Antenna and it seems to work just fine. The Antenna port for the this modem is on the back with a rubber plug. It works just like the A600 but it seems to fit just right with this modem and it isn’t loose.

How Um185 it work?

Once you do that you can then insert the Um185 Modem into your USB. The Nice thing about this is the software for the Modem is on the Modem itself, so you don’t loose the CD for the modem. It currently only supports Windows and MAC OSX operating system but I have seen there is a work around to use the Modem with Linux if your wondering.Once you insert it into the USB you’ll find you have to new Drives.

The Connection Manager:

As you can see this Connection manager is just the A600 Connection Manager. You can do a lot with this. If you would press f7 you will find some stuff you can tweak and change to your desire:

As you can see this software comes with a version of dial up web accelerator that helps speed up pictures of websites. It however can be disable or changed the faster loading of web pages. It also has an automatic web page load, when you click on connect you will be sent to a web page, although the default is http://www.mycricket.com, it can be changed to anything like google or yahoo.

Now I won’t go into the Pro’s or Cons because it is almost exactly like the A600 modem. Just like the software and portability of the modem to take it anywhere you would need internet access. It would be useful with the web accelerator software being used for this modem and might make your browsing feel and act a little more quicker. Although downloading files will be the same just like the A600 this accelerator software is only used to speed up loading web page display and not for downloading.

Conclusion:

I would much rather have the A600 with the strength meter on the modem itself and being able to see the strength without looking at the computer screen. It doesn’t have a Micro SD card but that all depends on if you need the extra space for portable software or not. I would recommend this for those who are less technically complex who just wants a modem to works out of the box.