Wireless wanderings: More travels, more discoveries, more frustrations, and more advice.

ARE YOU USING the broadband Internet connection found in a growing number of hotel and motel rooms? If you want to sit somewhere beyond the reach of that really short cable, carry your own longer Ethernet cable, which is also handy for connections where the Internet is available but a cable is not.

I prefer wireless, so now I tote (space permitting) a small, light Wi-Fi access point/router. I connect it to the hotel room Internet box, then use my laptop anywhere around the room, or in the next room if I have a suite. In some hotels/motels, the Wi-Fi radio signal from my room even lets me connect from the restaurant, lounge, or pool.

I get another benefit when traveling with my wife/business partner (and publisher of this magazine), Jeanne. We each tote a laptop, so setting up a Wi-Fi access point/router with NAT (network address translation) in our hotel room lets us both connect at the same time. Doing this requires making a simple but unusual change in the access point's configuration so the hotel room Internet service "sees" a single computer, not a router. I explain this step by step in the online extended version of this article at http://advisor.com/doc/13017.

T-Mobile Internet wireless service

Wi-Fi is terrific, but short range. When you need to connect in a wider area, you need a wide-area radio connection. I've been using T-Mobile Internet wireless service, which uses the T-Mobile GPRS-based cellphone network. With a Sierra Wireless AirCard 750 in my laptop, I can connect to the Internet at what the AirCard reports is 40Kbps from almost anywhere T-Mobile has mobile phone service. I've tested it in several areas of California and Arizona. When T-Mobile Internet works, it works fine. While my wife drove us from our San Diego office to a business meeting at Del Mar Racetrack (really!), in real time, I helped her avoid traffic by checking the Web for freeway conditions.

If you're thinking "40Kpbs is kind of slow," be sure you're comparing it fairly, instead of using the T-Mobile Internet radio connection, I could pull off the freeway and drive around until I found a Starbucks with T-Mobile HotSpot. (This is a separately-priced service but I save $10 a month by subscribing to both.) But I've been in plenty of towns where there's not a Starbucks in sight (the locals are not always a coffee-shop crowd). When driving down the freeway, having coffee somewhere other than Starbucks, or sitting on a rock at the beach, T-Mobile Internet wireless service is terrific.

But there are two more things you need to know: First, you can get cellphone network Internet connections from most wireless carriers, including Verizon, AT&T Wireless, and others. They are similar, but not identical. You must compare radio signal coverage, real connection speed (beware of exaggerated claims), and price. For instance, Sprint's wireless Internet service promises to connect at "average 50 to 70Kbps" for $80/month. But within reason, I don't see connection speed as the key factor. If the goal is to connect from anywhere, radio signal coverage matters most. In my case, both T-Mobile and Sprint appear to cover the areas I visit, so I chose T-Mobile to get wireless Internet and Wi-Fi HotSpot service for under $50 per month.

The second thing to know is that the T-Mobile Internet network broke in mid-August and as of this writing isn't fixed. The problem, encountered in most areas where ADVISOR LABS tested, is in reaching Internet sites--as often as not, we could not connect to anything. In other cases we could reach some Internet addresses but not others, including Microsoft.com and IBM.com. It's shocking the problem has continued for weeks. The only reason I can endorse T-Mobile Internet at all is because before mid-August it worked very well, and I assume a company as large as Deutsche Telekom, owner of T-Mobile, will get the problem solved. See our news article at http://Advisor.com/doc/12986 for details and current status.

Multiple providers are good

Do you have all your communications eggs in one basket? Are you tempted by the attractive packages offered by telephone companies and wireless carriers? Saving money is terrific, but beware of having a single-point-of-failure, which sometimes can be an entire company. We've all seen how vulnerable we are because of the security holes in Microsoft Windows, yet we're stuck with it because there's no competition. Most of us are stuck with our local power company and regional power grid, as millions of people learned in the August blackout. If you're fortunate enough to have alternatives, such as wired telephone service from both the local Baby Bell and the cable TV company, spread your business around. If you can, have a little bit of everything You won't get the best package price, but you're less likely to have it all break at once.

One recent example: A truck ripped out overead telephone lines on my street. I couldn't make a landline call to SBC to report the problem because the telephone cable was lying on th4 sidewalk. Fortunately, my Sprint mobile phone worked, and I have power adapters for home and car. My neighbor uses her mobile phone only while driving and keeps it plugged into the car power; stuck with a bad battery and no AC charger, she couldn't communicate while in her house. Reporting the problem to SBT was a major pain. I had to use a trick to reach the repair service office. Then one clerk blamed ME because another clerk didn't follow their reporting procedure, and didn't believe the cable was in the street (see the online article for details). Figuring it would take some time for SBC to roll in a crew capable of fixing the problem (it turned out to be a two-day repair), I grabbed my laptop, started to work, and my cable modem went out. My Wi-Fi system was of no use without the Internet connection. So I called in the problem to Time Warner RoadRunner on my mobile phone, then fired up the T-Mobile Internet wireless card. If you're counting how many tech vendors I talked to in one half-day period, toss in Digital Networks North America; my ReplayTV 5160 recorder was acting up, too.

Follow-ups on past articles

The new IBM ThinkPad X31 laptop that was so impressive when I wrote about it in July/August 2003, still is wonderful ... when it's not crashing. After two trips back to IBM for repair, both resulting in IBM re-imaging the hard drive (so I had to reinstall all my software), and IBM replacing the Intel Centrino Wi-Fi radio, the X31 laptop still randomly reboots itself. When the problem arises, the Wi-Fi connection becomes unstable, then Windows XP dies with a blue screen. Read details, and keep up on my adventures with this wonderful when it-works computer, at http://Advisor.comldoc/12591.

Places offering T-Mobile HotSpot Wi-Fi service continue to grow, with 2,772 locations as of this writing, now including Arizona and Nevada. Another bump up in sites will happen this Fall when HotSpots are activated in at least some Kinko's copy shop locations. Even with thousands of sites, mobile business users can't always find a T-Mobile HotSpot. There may seem to be a Starbucks on every corner, but they don't all have T-Mobile service; some cities and entire states don't have any HotSpots at all. In regions where the service is offered, most but not all standalone Starbucks have HotSpots, but "embedded" Starbucks in hotels and airports usually don't. You can see a fairly accurate list at http://locations.hotspot.tmobile.com, but it's a Catch 22 for travelers. To check the list for a nearby HotSpot site you need to go online, which you can't do until you find a HotSpot. I wish T Mobile provided a single list of all HotSpot sites nationwide in a text file I can download and keep on my laptop.

What's your wish, discovery, experience and recommendation? Write me at [e-mail], or use our Blog system to add your comments to the online edition of this article at http://Advisor.com/doc/13017.