Cellular-Based Broadband Wireless Internet Options

We must admit that we are strongly attracted to Sony's new Vaio x505 laptop noted on O'Grady's PowerPage yesterday. It weighs only 1.7 lbs, a real attraction to those of us who need to haul around a laptop all day from meeting to meeting and building to building. The main drawback, of course, is that the x505 runs Windows XP and not Mac OS X.

So why wouldn't Apple's 12" PowerBook G4 do? After all, it is a terrific laptop with a Superdrive and everything. Well, not everything unfortunately. In addition, it weighs 4.6 lbs, nearly 3 lbs more than the x505.

The main thing that the 12" PBG4 lacks for many people is a PC-card slot. Why a PC-card slot? Because cellular technology that provides anywhere broadband internet, not just at "hot spots" or in WiFi-enabled conference rooms, is exploding. Here is a summary by Brian Nakamoto, our West Coast reporter, after we discussed the new tiny laptop wonder from Sony:

You perked my interest to review the wireless broadband (non-802.11/non-satellite/non-microwave) solutions planned by cellular carriers:

Verizon's CDMA EV-DO (300-500 Kbps burstable to 2 Mbps) network is planned for 6 major markets by the middle of this year and nationwide by the end of 2005.

Sprint's CDMA EV-DV (EV-DO speeds and also improves voice quality) network is forecast to rollout nationwide sometime in 2006 or 2007.

Nextel's Flash OFDM (1.5 Mbps burstable to 3 Mbps) just started testing in one market.

AT&T's Edge "2" WCDMA (10 Mbps?!) is under development.

CDMA 2000 (40-60 Kbps burstable to 144 Kbps) from Sprint and Verizon, and GSM/GPRS Edge (60-80 Kbps burstable to 130 Kbps) from AT&T appear to have the most national coverage currently.

Why doesn't Apple at least make drivers for a PC-card to USB or FireWire adapter that could be used with the 12" PowerBook G4? We are thinking long and hard about the Sony....