New "Gadget" Will Become the Road Warrior's Best Pal

[Nick]

Check out the wireless connnectivity "Deal of the Year".

The new T-Mobile wireless network card will likely become an essential component of the dedicated road warrior's armament.

Combined with T-Mobile's ubiquitous network connectivity, the Sony-Ericsson model GC79 wireless PCMCIA network card now gives the traveler additional access to 802.11b broadband connectivity at T-Mobile's "HotSpots" located at airports, hotels, Starbucks, Borders and FedEx Kinko's, plus an ever increasing number of other (non T-Mobile) locations throughout the U.S.

I've been connected to the T-Mobile network via a Sierra 755 AirCard for almost a year now, and am absolutely delighted with the service. Every where I travel, I am online at a connect speed equivalent to a good dial-up connection, adequate for for checking email, posting to message boards and casual surfing. I have been online in restaurants, real estate offices, wating in the barber shop, the doctor's office, enjoying a leisurely breakfast at the Cracker Barrel, and checking in here while doing lunch at the mall.

Now, with the addition of 802.11b, accessing VPNs and downloading large databases such as sales and inventory records will be a snap. After work, a little intense gaming, afterward, enjoying a relaxing movie.

A very cool and useful feature: the card will "sniff" out ambient Wi-Fi signals as you drive and beep an alert, even if your laptop is in 'sleep' mode. Pull up to a local library or a bakery in a small town, park at the curb and you're instantly on line with a spiffy connect speed.
http://www.t-mobile.com/images/products/224272/detail.jpg Sony-Ericsson GC79
Features:

Tri-band GSM/GPRS (900/1800/1900 MHz)
Wireless LAN IEEE 802.11b (Wi-Fi)
Compatible with Windows®98/Me/2000//XP
Wi-Fi (802.11b) ready
No antennas, cables, adaptors or phone jacks needed
Powered via PC Card slot
Supports MNP5, V.42 bis, TCP/IP compression
Supports Cisco CCX protocol
PC Card Type II, 32-bit Cardbus

T-Mobile Price for Sony-Ericsson card, $199, plus $35 set-up charge. Monthly service from $30, which, amazingly, includes unlimited bandwidth! This is absolutely the best deal out there.

T-Mobile (http://www.t-mobile.com/products/overview.asp?phoneid=224272&class=data)

[DonLandis]

NIck- I've been using the Sierra Aircard for about 13 months with excellent results. I made the move when about that time Hotels were beginning a practice of overcharging for local phone calls connect time. I fought every one of those charges and won on and FCC violation but the battle became a real drag so I made the move to go with T-Mobile. Recently as stated in another thread, I picked up the latest deal from T-Mobile which is the Ipaq6315. Last evening while waiting to begin work I had 45 minutes to kill so I read up on the forums posts. It's a real drag typing on one of those PDA's and I don;t see it replacing my laptop for serious Hotel compyting but the e-mail monitoring and Bluetooth cell phone system is a real step up from simple cell phones.
I just added the voice software and still working on it as the Phone book/address book needs to conform better to make it work more accurately but the few numbers I've set uip properly now work by total hands free voice command.

BTW- with my switch to the ipaq 6315, Cingular just lost $1200 a year in revenue from me because their technology is just not up to speed as T-mobile. I hope the phone coverage os T-mobile is up to what I need, however. I do know that the Sierra Card does not work in North Carolina yet. T-mobile tells me that is soon coming but they've been saying that for 6 months.

My IPAQ6315 has a sc chg of $79 per month for 1000 business hours talk time, unlimited GPRS (100kbs) wireless, unlimited T-mobile hotspots. The Sierra air card for my laptop is still at $30 because they apparently don't allow the $19.95 deal when your phone service is the IPAQ6315. But if you jhave a regular cell phone and the air card, you can share the same sim card and get the air card unlimited deal for $19.95.

Also, this month you buy the IPAQ and you get 10k miles from Delta. I immediately had this put to my CES trade show Delta tickets and got free round trip flight to CES in January. That took a bit of phone calling but they finally came through. I would have paid $278 for those same tickets. Delta uses 25K miles so the IPAQ deal only was 10/25's the the ticket price. Still a formidable discount!

[stonecold]

I have the sony ericson card.

I only pay 19.99 for unlimited data service. But that might be the do to the type of plan I am on Friends and Family 1600 (national plan)

Great card. they gave methe sony because the sony ericson was the only thing they had in the store. it a good gprs card. but for 802.11b i still like to use my orinoco gold card.

Also Tmobile is rolling out EGDE to there GPRS service. When EDGE is has been upgraded through out the gprs network of tmobile, providing speeds of 200 - 300 kbps with burst up to 500

[DonLandis]

stonecold and Nick-
When I first got the air card the connection was difficult but with most areas now and the latest download software upgrade, connection works smoothly. I look forward to the Edge.

BTW- I reduced my aol connection charges to their lowest $4.95 per month now and still maintain it for a reliable dialup backup when I get to a hotel that fails with T-Mobile which is rare for my travel destinations.