|
It's an apple and I just plugged in to my mac and it just plain works.
Nothing to complain about with this little model, just plug and play. Compatible with new Macs with Snow Leapard installed.
In this case, Apple has customized Motorola's driver to produce a generally solid product.At the time of this writing, Apple has discontinued the Apple USB Modem (MA034Z/A) but they are still widely available for around US$50.Testing Notes: Software modems require a driver that can pump real-time audio like data to the modem's transceiver regardless of any other system software that may be running. You'll need to install the software from the included CD first, and then plug-in the modem for it to be recognized by Mac OS X. The disadvantage is that modem processing is offloaded to a specialized driver that runs on the host computer. The Apple USB Modem is a controllerless or software modem based on the Motorola SM56 design. Having run both modems continuously over an extended period, I prefer the USR modem for its stability. In my testing, this modem worked well.The USR5637 is widely available for around US$50.Testing Notes: The manual included with the modem is unclear about the installation procedure.
The modem includes its own control processor which understands AT commands directly, so only a basic USB serial driver is needed.
In my own testing, I've found it's important to connect the modem to a reliable USB Hub as close to the host computer as possible.
This modem is about the size of a cell phone (significantly larger than the Apple USB Modem).I had no trouble running both the Apple USB Modem and USR Modem at the same time.
The advantages of a software modem are low cost, low power consumption, and compact design.
In the Network Preferences panel, select USB Modem, click Advanced, and set the Vendor to "Other".
Apple's USB Modem driver generally worked well but could fail under certain conditions like launching Disk Utility with external FireWire drives attached.
I tend to prefer controller based modems for their greater stability, but the Apple USB Modem is certainly an elegant and compact unit.The US Robotics USB Modem (USR5637) is a traditional controller based modem from a manufacturer with a solid product history.
I'm the developer of Phone Amego which uses USB modems for landline support.
It's more modem for about the same price.
Please tell Apple to never stop making these. I live in an area where we have lighting strikes a lot and don't want to have to have the internal modem fixed each time. This product is so easy to use -- I love it.Thank you.Jan Crabb
My advice: if you need a modem, get a computer with a built in one. So far I haven't had a problem with it. It works fine, except my Internet is slightly slower, but that makes sense because the power has to flow through an external modem before reaching the computer. If that isn't feasible, get one of these. There's not another solution that I know of.
|
