Review: HSPA+ Rocket Mobile Internet Stick (Nokia CS-18) on Rogers
Friday, August 20, 2010 at 1:55PM 
By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
USB-enabled Internet sticks solve many problems and offer instantaneous connectivity on the go. The best thing about this sort of mobile Internet solution is that it doesn’t draw much power from notebooks and since it is a USB device, it can be used across different machines. Rogers’ Rocket Mobile Internet Stick, AKA the Nokia CS-18 HSPA + .is a prime example of this solution.
Digital nomads and serious road warriors who need a remote Internet connection can simply plug and play the device to their existing notebooks. The beauty of this HSPA+ Rocket Stick is that Nokia also bundled in built-in microUSB slot which makes this a two-in-one device, a mobile internet stick and a flash memory drive.
Not much larger than your USB thumb drive, Nokia’s Rocket Mobile Internet Stick is a completely plug and play affair. Whether you have a PC notebook or a Macbook, software to get up and running is already included and installs directly from the USB stick.
We tested the Rocket Stick on a Lenovo Thinkpad x100e portable as well as a MacBook Pro. In both cases, installation took around three minutes and the device was easily found and chosen as the default way to access the Internet.
For grabbing e-mail it is reasonably fast although surfing graphic intensive websites takes a bit longer. We used the Rocket Mobile Internet Stick successfully in Toronto as well as in Halifax.
In terms of transfer speeds, Rogers expects you can get 21Mbps downloads, but 0.79Mbps down to 12Mbps seems to be the norm under normal usage.
Available from Rogers for $0.00 with a three-year contract or $174.99 outright, The Nokia CS-18 HSPA+ Rocket Mobile Internet Stick is a great solution for anyone needing mobile Internet on-the-go. Its a simple solution that works well and efficiently.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Related review: Huawei E1691 data stick on Mobilicity
Reader Comments (7)
The Nokia Rocket stick works perfectly on my wife's notebook but I cannot get it to work on mine. I get the Internet Connection icon, click on it and click on the Connect button. The light on the stick is On and it seems to be connected, but there is no data going in or out. 0 bytes in 0 bytes out. If it is my antivirus or other security software that is preventing the data transfer, can you suggest where I should look and which software I should disable in order to use the stick.?
Many, many thanks.
Need help, I can not get my nokia cs 18 stick working on my computer.
I am runing windows 7 and the computer is only about 3 month old
I have bin sent 3 new sticks none have worked and thay will not let me out of my contract.
CAN SOMEBODY HELP ME
gettrow1@hotmail.com