Difference between GPS and GPRS

--> GPS
 
GPS is simply a way to find a specific location on the planet. At each point of the planet, at least three satellites should be in a straight line to the receiver for an accurate reading. That might not always be true, as in certain locations mountains and crevices might prevent a GPS device from having a direct line of sight to three satellites.

You might have also heard of the Galileo system, a new network of 30 satellites that the European Union plans to put into space beginning this year. The deployment of the Galileo system is expected to go on until the year 2008, when the system will be ready to perform its first commercial applications.

Current estimates put the cost of activating the Galileo system at 2.1 billion Euros. It is also estimated to run up a 220 million Euro bill a year just to maintain the network.

Either way, the basic operational concept of both systems is triangulation, which uses a GPS receiver to measure distance by bouncing radio signals off the satellites. Another interesting fact that few people know about is that the military has the most precise version of GPS, whereas the commercial versions have something intentionally left out so that the level of accuracy is not as good as the one used in a military application.

Likewise, certain applications for GPS require a monthly fee, and those applications are much more expensive than regular applications. Again, this is much more accurate than the regular version of GPS.


  

 
GPRS

GPRS may have one more alphabet, but it is an entirely different matter altogether. GPRS stands for General Packet Radio Services. 

This is a way of sending data through radio waves that are currently being used to transmit voice. 

The data in digital form is sent out in packets, or in mini-bursts that are decoded by the receiving unit, which can be one of those modern handsets that are GPRS-enabled. 

 

GPRS is an additional feature that is offered over a mobile telephone network. One of the key advantages of GPRS is speed, with estimations placing theoretical speeds at around 171 kbps if all eight timeslots are used. This would be close to 10 times the speeds available on Circuit Switched Data (CSD) networks. When you take this into account, it is easy to see why GPRS is viewed as being cheaper than competing SMS and CSD technologies.

GPRS also has the advantage of being ‘always-on’. There is no need for a dial-up modem, and your GPRS device is always on but you are charged only if you send or receive data across the network Of course, when we say always on, it also depends on the user being within range of a base station.

A couple of the current GPRS applications which are widely used are web browsing and chatting over the mobile network. Push-to-talk technology is starting to make its presence felt, and files are being transferred in ever-increasing volume over GPRS networks.

A possible area of growth for GPRS applications would be in the area of remote control, where you are able to access and control your house and the appliances within that house. You could activate and deactivate the alarm protecting your house, switch on and off electrical lights at random, and maybe even start the air-conditioning running before you even get home. 

More on GPRS

To summarise, GPRS is a data service that transports its data in the form of packets. This means that the information transfer is achieved by breaking down data into packets before sending it, and then reassembling said data after it has been transmitted and received. This is very similar to how the Internet operates, where data is also broken down into bits and sent to desktop browsers.

Using packets to transfer data also means that the available bandwidth for GPRS use can be shared between several users, which is a much more efficient method than allocating one channel for each user.

GPRS is good for the mobile Internet because most Internet pages can port directly over to a GPRS browser. This means that you can access most Internet websites on a complaint handheld device. With the power of the Internet at your fingertips, you should be able to access nearly any sort of information that you take a fancy to in just a matter of minutes, if not seconds.

The best part of this is that GPRS is not merely limited to GSM networks. The Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) networks that are common to both North and South America will also support the use of GPRS. 

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Surf the net on laptop with mobile phone as modem

Surf the internet on you computer with mobile phone as the modem

Ever wanted to surf the net but didn't have a modem on your computer? You don't realy need a modem to be able to surf the net,you can simply use your cell phone as a modem.  

HOW? 

This short tutorial will teach how to set your phone as a modem connected to your computer/laptop.

1. You need a cell phone. It has to have GPRS and it must be modem enabled.

2.You need a means of connection from your cell phone to your computer or laptop (inferred,bluetooth or usb cable)

3.You need a dialup connection

4.You need to know and change your proxy settings

Step 1: Take your gprs enabled cell phone and connect it to your computer or laptop using either buletooth,infered or a usb cable.

Step 2: Create a dial up connection.Go into your control panel,then into internet options.Then go to connections and add. Create a dial up connection and when it asks for a phone number type in *99#

Step 3: On your new dialup connection add the same proxy address you have on your gprs in your cell phone.

Step 4: Now on your cpanel there should be something called modem options (If your 's doesn't have you'll have to search your computer for an option that allows you to change the acess point name or also known as the APN) here you must change the APN to whatever your APN is on yor gprs in your phone.

Step 5: Go to start menu and connect,then connect to your dial up (make sure your cell phone is connected to your computer or laptop)

Step 6: Start your browser (internet exploxer,opera etc) and start surfing the net.

Note that every cell phone has it's own speed for example 3g phones can reach up to speed's of 48 kb/s.

Problems faced:
1. First problem is that in order to run, most phones need the drivers installed. Now either bluetooth, infared or cable modems will be installed from the disc you get when u buy one. Now on the disk it should have the drivers on there, if not you will need to find another internet connection and download them.

2. Next, you CANNOT use Firefox, Bit torrent apps, IM apps, Opera, or any web based programs besides IE if you are connecting through a Proxy address. Also another downside of a proxy is your computer wont store the cookies from the phone so logging into sites may be difficult. Now in order to get around this block and use web based applications u will need to dowload a program called "Your Freedom" (Just google it as I cant remember site ATM) then enter in YF your proxy settings and it will work, and then add the proxy setting of localhost:8080 for HTTP and localhost:1080 for Socks 5. This will let you use opera and Firefox.

Ok and now I will give you some tips on how to make most of your phone as a modem.

1. Use Firefox with the FasterFox extension set up on the max and your browsing speed will be much better. An alternative is to use Opera

2. Use a download manager to speed up your downloads by 4 times and some times up to 8 times (say your av. DL speed was 1.0 Kb/s it will increase it to 4.0 Kb/s becuase it will download te file in 4 different places at once.) I reccomend using Get Right.

3. Get premium version of Your Freedom as it will get rid of 2 hour time limit and max of 10 connections. And you cant get a crack for it or anything as it uses the info from the account you set up on their site.

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