I'm just starting to research this, and I'm a little confused on something. From what I can gather, it sounds like if you have a wireless internet account you can only access it if you're within range (about 1000 feet?) of a "hot spot". And I only found about 10 in my city. So I would have to go to Starbucks or something to actually have internet access. I couldn't just go to the park and surf the net. Is my understanding correct?
if u have sprint wireless with unlimited internet usuage on the cell phone, you can get a cord and hook it up to your laptop for internet access. my brother does this. he says its about as fast as DSL.
Earthlink has a wireless access service. I've been using it for about two months now as I travel nationally. I've had no problems with it and it does give a good speed in the connections. Go here: www.earthlink.net/wireless Hope that helps.
"Wireless" is being hyped to the general public as well as to the technology community: the fact is that there still are few reliable wireless hotspots available around the country. Most of those available require you to pay and in general each pay hot-spot is incompatible with the others. That is you cant just walk from hot-spot to hot-spot without reconfiguring your connections. In many cases even getting the correct configurations that allow you to connect is a major problem: the vendors for many of these have made it truly onerous to use. The other issue - even for coffeehouses - is that they are often mis-configured and you cant be gauranteed even after paying in advance that a particular location will be working. Some forward thinking communities/governments - mostly in California - are setting up free public hot spots that are reliable - read correctly configured - and that dont require a lot of special configuration so that yoiu truly can walk around the city and use the systems for free. There are only three places that I know of that function like this.
Wireless DSL is different, you can access it as long as you have line of sight to the transmitter, could be many miles.
Canyonman, Do you use the Earthlink wireless connection for trading? I'm wondering because when I looked at their site, it shows various data limits (5,10,15... each one is more expensive) per month. With charting software running every day, and a trading platform, plus all those ET pages, it seems a trader would run up some huge extra charges. Do you find this to be true? Thanks kp
I've recently tried both WIFI hotspots and a wireless internet PCMCIA card. The wireless internet was very slow and unstable. I wouldn't want to rely on it for anything. Vendors advertise "high speed" of "UP TO" 56K, but that is a crock. I was getting at most 30-40k. With WIFI hotspots, you must be in the immediate area of an outlet, such as a Starbucks. The speed is excellent, but of course the problem is you need to be near the hotspot. I signed for T-Mobile hotspots to trade while on a recent driving vacation up the east coast. But it was a hassle locating the hotspots, and two were not working. So I just stuck with a dialup in the hotel room. Overall, neither technology is ready for prime time outside your home base, IMO. Although, I do use a WIFI card and transmitter for my home network and strongly recommend it.