Believe the Hype: 3G Broadband Data Cards Rock!

Wi-Fi is great...when it works. Overall, Wi-Fi hotspots aren't universally reliable—in other words, I never know where I'm actually going to be able to get a signal. Thankfully, the cell phone carriers have been offering a solution that access-hungry users need to know about: 3G data cards.

For months, I have been praising—at the top of my lungs—the virtues of high-speed, 3G data cards from Verizon, Cingular, and Sprint. These cards go into the PC slot of your laptop and use the high-speed networks of cell carriers to give you broadband speeds anywhere there's a mobile signal. You can also use some PDA phones, such as the Treo 700, as an EVDO modem. If you live in a major urban area, you'll get about 10 times a dial-up connection. In more rural areas, you can still surf, but at slower speeds that are about three times a dial up connection. The easiest (though also the priciest) option is to just get one of the new laptops from Lenovo (the Thinkpad series) or Panasonic (the Toughbook 74 and the new W5, pictured), which have EVDO-capability built right in.

This means I no longer have to worry about whether there's Wi-Fi or not in the airport lounge where I'm trapped due to flight delays. I also don't have to spend the lousy $6.95 for one-hour's Wi-Fi network use, buy cards with codes on them, search around for a strong network, or any of the other countless little hassles and expenses that come with trying to get online with Wi-Fi.

It seems as though not a day goes by without a full-page newspaper ad by Sprint or Verizon advertising their Broadband Connection and BroadbandAccess services, respectively, and yet, I don't run into many people outside of tech circles who actually use these thing. And that's too bad, because they actually work. I can't say that about a lot of tech—that it actually works. My experiences with Sprint and Verizon have so far been seamless—nary a glitch and I've been using their cards for months (in fact, I'm using Sprint's card right now).

My limited experience with Cingular's card was a little less flawless. I wasn't able to get the fast speeds that I got with Sprint or Verizon during a recent airport lounge wait, but I'll follow up with a more extensive review in the future. What the Cingular cards—in particular the Option GlobeTrotter GT MAX LaptopConnect card—have over the Sprint and Verizon cards is the ability to get a signal in GSM zones with mid-speed GPRS and high-speed, 3G UMTS networks (essentially, using networks around the rest of the world except for South Korea and Japan, for those of you who want to use these cards when they travel internationally).

The next step for these cards is even more bandwidth. Good news for those who like down download video and load-up graphics-intensive sites—Verizon will be upgrading download speeds by up to 50 percent some time this fall, according to an earlier post by Chris Null. For an overview of the EVDO services, check out these posts from Becky Worley, Robin Raskin, and Dory Devlin.

Schumacher wins to tie Alonso

Title race all square with just two races to go.

It should have been Fernando Alonso’s race, but in the end Michael Schumacher’s 91st career victory earned him sufficient points to match the Spaniard’s score in the driver standings as they head for the penultimate round in Japan next weekend.

On a wet track Renault’s Alonso swept to a 25-second advantage over Schumacher in the Ferrari prior to the first set of pit stops. But then things began to go wrong for the champion. First Schumacher stayed on the same set of intermediate Bridgestones during his stop, whereas Alonso changed his Michelin front inters. The new ones did not give him anything like the performance of his originals. Then, to compound everything, a sticking right rear wheel nut in Alonso's second stop cost him at least seven seconds.

By that stage, lap 35, Giancarlo Fisichella in the second Renault was leading but under attack from Schumacher. The Italian made his second stop on lap 41 and was still leading when he left the pits, but then he ran wide and Schumacher, who had stopped on lap 40, pounced.

Alonso’s final set of dry tyres was back up to par, and he soon caught and passed his team mate and started to slash into Schumacher’s advantage. But that wheel-nut problem would prove decisive, and the German finished 3.1 seconds to the good, elated. Each now has 116 points, with two races left.

Nick Heidfeld should have been fourth for BMW Sauber after a great run. But the final corner proved his undoing. Jenson Button had been scrapping hard for fifth with Honda team mate Rubens Barrichello in the closing stages, when slight rain made the track treacherous. Button slid wide at one stage and fell behind McLaren’s Pedro de la Rosa. He eventually recovered and repassed the Spaniard when De la Rosa made a mistake of his own, and going into the final lap Button used traffic to go round the outside of Barrichello. Going down to Turn 16 he caught Heidfeld and trapped him behind Takuma Sato's lapped Super Aguri. As Button ducked down the inside, Barrichello hit the back of the BMW and spun it, damaging his own nose.

Button thus grabbed an unexpected fourth, De la Rosa gratefully snatched fifth from Barrichello, and the unfortunate Heidfeld had to be content with seventh ahead of Mark Webber in the Williams, who earned the final point when Red Bull’s David Coulthard half spun out of eighth place on lap 49. Four laps earlier the Scot had collided with Felipe Massa there, eliminating the Ferrari driver who had been trading fastest laps with Alonso during a strong recovery drive from his back-of-the-grid start.

Behind Coulthard, a single-stop run brought Tonio Liuzzi 10th for Toro Rosso, with Nico Rosberg in the Williams right alongside and Robert Doornbos also in touch in the second Red Bull.

BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica had an up and down race, getting shoved down the order early on in the opening lap melees in heavy standing water and high spray; later he was the first to switch to dries, just before the track was ready. He headed home Super Aguri’s Sato, Scott Speed in the Toro Rosso, Spyker MF1's Christijan Albers (who was also involved in the final-corner incident), and Sakon Yamamoto in the Super Aguri (who received a drive-through penalty for ignoring blue flags when being lapped by Schumacher).

Neither of the Toyotas finished, their only high point being a spell towards the end when Ralf Schumacher set a couple of fastest laps, Spyker MF1's Tiago Monteiro spun in Turn 1 and stalled, Massa’s rear suspension was damaged, and McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen, having run as high as second early on after overtaking Fisichella, dropped out with a stuck throttle.

Thus the championship fight could not be better poised as we head to Suzuka. As he said goodbye to his legion of Chinese fans, Schumacher savoured his first decent race in Shanghai and said: “Today was a little present to myself."