Sprint's new PCS Connection Card
It's technically a violation of your terms of service to hook up a laptop to a cellphone to piggyback on its $15 a month unlimited Sprint PCS Vision wireless data connection, mainly because they want people to pony up for their more expensive standalone data service service for laptops that requires a separate PC card (it's also why Sprint won't put put a cellphone with Bluetooth — it makes connecting to a laptop a little too easy). There are ways to use your phone as a wireless modem — there's a program called PdaNet that'll let you do it with your Treo 600 — but if you get busted you could find yourself with a hefty bill for all the data that you've transferred, since unlimited doesn't mean unlimited if you do something you're not supposed to do with the phone.
Anyway, making the prospect of going legit somewhat more palatable, Sierra Wireless has a new wireless PC card, the Sprint PCS Connection Card PC3300, that can access Sprint's wireless network (top speed: 144 Kbps, though 50-70 Kbps is more likely) and automatically roll-over to Sprint's new WiFi service wherever it's available. Though it's not quite as good as it sounds, since the laptop has to already have WiFi — the card itself doesn't have 802.11b or 802.11g built-in.
