When I’m on the road, I use a Sprint Sierra card. I used to pay for Internet access in my room, fish around for Wi-fi networks, etc. But no more. Now, when I’m at the airport, in the hotel or even when I’m at home and both of my Internet connections go down (sadly, it happens) I’m able to use my laptop and be online. Right now, I’m using the Compass 597 from Sierra, which has a top speed of 3.1 Mbps down or 1.8 Mbps up. I look forward to the day when I can upgrade to the Sierra USB 306/307, which actually bumps that top speed to 21 Mbps, but for now I’ll take what I can get.
I knew from the day that Zack lent me his card at MacWorld that I loved this thing. You plug it in, an installer pops up (located on the USB stick) and it’s a 30 second install and then reboot. The installer loads 3 kexts (SierraSwitch, SierraSwitchKicker and SierraSupport) so last time I installed it I tested doing a kextload of the drivers and thus hopefully not needing a reboot, no dice and eliminating a reboot I rarely do isn’t high on my radar, but theoretically you should be able to install without the restart…
Once installed, you just open the application and click on the Connect button and it does the rest. What the GUI design lacks in a sleek and pretty look, it makes up for in simplicity of use. Don’t get me wrong, they used that glass shelf widget look and it’s not ugly to look at, it’s just a bit of an awkward app.
Once you’re connected, the Sprint card has a couple of other features that I find pretty useful. The first most iPhone users will scoff at, but if you click on the GPS slide-down menu and click on the play button, it will retrieve your GPS coordinates. Using that information you can click on icons to bring up coffee shops, restaurants, gas stations and of course the nearest Sprint store. Under Applications (which also brings up web pages), you can do a speed test, hit up Sprint’s support, manage your account and of course, find coverage maps.
Overall, Sprint SmartView and the Sierra cards make for a great combo punch and a great tool that I use every time I’m on the road (mostly in airports and hotel rooms, not while actually driving on a road – usually). I rarely give a product a glowing recommendation, but I’ve been planning on writing this up for awhile as these things deserve it!
