Rampidbyter Rampid byter: A byte of my .Net developing life.

I’m still a little stunned. I started Monday of this week off sans music, which really stinks when you’re writing software. Nothing like some decent music to help keep my mind in the programming rhythm. On Tuesday morning I decided it was time to sign-up for the AT&T iPad 3G cellular plan so I could use Pandora on the iPad like I do at home.

I had the choice between the two plans of course. The first plan being the $15 a month for a maximum of 250MB of data usage, or the double-the-cost unlimited plan sitting at $30 a month. Considering I can change my plan at anytime with no contracts other than the slightly abridged agreement to cancel prior to the auto-renewal by AT&T. I opted for the $30 a month unlimited plan simply because I don’t really trust what would happen if i exceeded that allotted 250MB regardless of what the agreement says. I’ve been burned by changing terms from carriers one too many times T-mob, er, I mean by a certain carrier.

Most of Tuesday I listened to music. I turned it off while I was out to lunch or in meetings, but mostly just had about six hours of music. When I got home I turned off the cellular connection and re-enabled the wifi connection. I kept wifi off at work and cellular off when I'm at home. No sense in double dipping when one or the other is not needed. The same routine happens again on Wednesday with another good six hours of music to get through the day.

Today I needed to change the settings on the iPad to keep it from auto-locking, and I happened to hit the ‘usage’ tab from the general settings area out of curiosity. That happened to show the cellular usage for the lifetime of the iPad. In no more than two and a quarter days I'd used over 270MB of data. Without playing any games, downloading any content from any site, or ANYTHING of the sort other than just using Pandora with occasional iPhone Facebook app I exceeded the 250MB limit. In no more than THREE days of occasional use I used 270MB. Wow. Either AT&T really set the bar low on what it considers nominal usage, or I consume vastly more data than your average user not particularly doing anything useful. I don’t even have email setup on the iPad and I blew through 250MB without trying. 

If anyone else out there is considering the choice between the two plans just save yourself the hassle and just get the unlimited plan. You’ll kick yourself otherwise because 250MB is just a drop of water in the bucket of data to be consumed by the iPad.