Questions on Cellular Web Connectivity

I'm a little out of my area of expertise here, so hopefully these questions
are fairly basic.

A friend has the opportunity to have a company-subsidized WAN card for a
laptop; the company is offering to pay half of the $60 monthly fee. She
called me to ask if that's a good deal. (is it?)

She doesn't currently have a laptop, but is intrigued - I'll loan her one.
I'm trying to figure out the advantage of this WAN card vs. using ordinary
802.11 wireless. The obvious one is that cellular access is pretty-much
universal, whereas hotspots are not. Is that the issue, or is there something
more subtle?

Finally, her Nokia 6126 can apparently be "tethered" (in AT&T terms) to a
laptop via USB and so act as a modem. Is there any advantage / disadvantage
of doing it this way vs. using the WAN card?

Thanks for any clarification, and obviously if there's something else I should
be asking here, feel free to chime in.

Art

art.shapiro@unisys.com (Arthur Shapiro) wrote in
news:fj1rgr$dod$1@si05.rsvl.unisys.com:

> The obvious one is that cellular access is pretty-much
> universal, whereas hotspots are not. Is that the issue, or is
there
> something more subtle?
>

Cellular, more correctly spelled SELLular, is much slower than
your average wifi hotspot, but DOES allow you full roaming wifi,
so far, does not. You have much more connectivity in more places
because the SELLular systems are built-out and designed to roam
from cell to cell.

The SELLular cards work just like the wifi cards but may have to
be run from some "handling software" the SELLular carrier lies
through his corporate teeth and tells you benefits you. What
he's doing is preventing your laptop from becoming a network
distributor into his SELL system so the card only works on the
computer it's plugged into. They also have a history of fooling
around with your networking in the laptop to prevent crossing
over between the wifi port and the Sellular port. You get one or
the other on some systems....manually switching off the SELLular
link to get to the wifi link. They're control freaks, you know.

The only advantage to using her Nokia as a modem over the
aircards is she doesn't have to buy yet another account/number
for the aircard. On most carriers this is much cheaper, which
she doesn't care about as she's not paying the bill, than the
aircard route. The disadvantage of SELLphone interfaces is the
data link is disconnected during phone calls. The aircard is,
itself, another sellphone, complete with its own number, so it
doesn't matter if she's talking on the Nokia or not, she's always
connectable.

If her job is paying...by all means get the aircard! If she's
paying, the phone link is better, economically. As an example,
an aircard account is about $60/mo. Alltel will sell me data for
my MotoROKR Z6M at 1X (around 110Kbps speed) for $10/mo extra on
the phone account or EVDO "broadband" (around 700Kbps speed) for
$25. My portable is a Nokia N800 Linux internet tablet (handheld
computer) which uses Bluetooth to connect to the phone. Works
great, very fast.

Wish someone would buy ME an aircard and pay the bills for MY
laptop....(snif).....(darn it)....(frown)....

Larry
--
Isn't it ironic that the same ISPs that are telling you
you're downloads threaten their networks......
.....are testing 100Gbps TV to sell on the SAME systems?
http://tinyurl.com/27qx3v