Need mobile internet

[bigevil1000]

I drive a truck for a living. How can I, while on the road, use my laptop to access the internet. Do I use my cell phone? What about additional hardware or software?

 

[riser]

Cisco Aironet card I believe they're called.. they work off cell phone towers.. it's not the fastest, but you'll get certain things like normal text emails and internet.. they'll run you around 60-80 dollars I believe. It's a wireless card that inserts into the PCMCIA slot in a laptop.

 

[Dev]

Are you in the States? If you are in Europe you can use UMTS or EDGE which will give you 384/64 for UMTS and a little less for EDGE. I don't know if this is available in the States though.

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I want my epitaph to be: "Moved to /dev/null"

 

[folken]

or get a rediculous wireless antenna and leech off open wifi accesspoints.
<A HREF="http://www.radiolabs.com/products/antennas/2.4gig/trucker-wifi-antenna.php" target="_new">Trucker Wireless Antenna</A>

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[Muircheartach]

Good evening,

I just saw your question and I'm sorry to respond so late. Hopefully this can help...

I posted this a little earlier today:

"I've been using AT&T/Cingular and Verizon Air Cards for some time all over the world and have had pretty good luck with them - if you're the lucky type, you might be able to get the card for free if you can find a monthly service plan that doesn't hurt too much...

A better card is the one Sprint offered - much higher speeds than EDGE can get you - burst up to 600Kbp! However, if the 100-150Kbp doesn't turn you off (and certainly there's an understandable trade-off for your location being without DSL/CM), then you're going down the right road."

With that said, I have successfully used the Sony/Ericson EDGE Air card all over the US - the speed won't set your hair on fire, but as I mentioned to r00ster in the earlier post, it's better than no connectivity at all. The cards can (and on occasion have) cost nearly $400 - this is my experience. However, since this has been the case, I have seen many of these devices given away by service providers in exchange for roping you into a service agreement (one to two years). I've paid as low as $60/month with unlimited use for the EDGE Air cards and slightly over $90/month for the Sprint offering - even though this option costed more, it was worth it for the speed and coverage from NYC to SF.

Whatever you do I wish you the best!

Best cheers, Robbie M