MacBook Pro + V640 ExpressCard

I bought a V620 EVDO card from Verizon months ago to use with my PowerBook. Now that I'm on a MacBook Pro that card is useless because the MBP has an ExpressCard/34 slot instead of a PC Card slot.

Verizon sells the V640 ExpressCard, so I decided to buy one. Of course I wanted to transfer my existing service to the new card rather than get a new contract. I ended up having to go to the Verizon Wireless kiosk at the mall; I couldn't manage to order one online or by phone without getting a new contract. Total cost: nigh $350. $299.99 for the card, plus tax, plus a $20 fee to "change handsets". Pretty steep, but the ~18 months left on my contract would go to waste without the new card.

So the card arrived this morning by Fedex. I put it in the MBP, which recognized it, gave me a nice menu bar extra for it, and asked if I wanted to activate it, which I did. Unfortunately the activation didn't work, presumably because my old card was still activated. I tried to activate the new card at verizonwireless.com but it didn't work and told me to call an 800 number. So I called the 800 number and was able to activate the new card that way. Actually I had to give them the card's ESN over the phone, and then the MBP activated the card.

Other than that, it works great - better than the V620 did. The V620 wasn't supported by Apple and required a small hack to get working, and didn't give me the nice menu bar extra showing the single strength. The V640 requires no hacks and just works.