AT&T Wireless Broadband Laptop Connect Card and Service: Product Review

It seems like there is more and more of a need to be connected to the internet everywhere you go. Important business is now conducted primarily by e-mail, and friends and family are increasingly staying connected via the internet and social networking websites these days. Most modern-day laptops are equipped with wireless networking cards which will allow you to connect to any wi-fi hotspot, but this won't allow you to connect to the internet on the road or in many smaller cities and towns. For truly mobile internet access, you need a wireless broadband card offered by a cellular phone company. AT&T Wireless is one of the biggest players in the mobile broadband market today, so when I needed a wireless internet card for my laptop, I decided to get the card and wireless service from AT&T Wireless.

The AT&T Wireless Laptop Connect Card was easy enough to install in my computer since it just slid into the Type II card slot on the side of my laptop. After plugging in the wireless broadband card, I was directed to install the AT&T Internet Connection Manager Software on my computer, which was just like installing any other small piece of software and only took a few minutes. After installing the software, I was ready to go. I opened the AT&T Internet Manager, which immediately recognized the card I had just installed and was able to pick up a wireless signal right away. Within 30 seconds, I was connected to the internet.

As far as the AT&T Mobile Broadband service went, I have to say it was kind of slow. Whenever I was out of AT&T's 3G coverage area, my download and upload speeds were similar to what they would be with dial-up internet service and no where near broadband. Whenever I was in an AT&T #G coverage area, mobile internet service was much faster, but I still noticed a few seconds of lag time when first loading pages or clicking links that I definitely don't get when I'm using wi-fi internet service. The 3G service would be fast enough for me to get some basic internet work done, but I certainly wouldn't want to rely on it as my only internet connection. I also found that I had trouble streaming both audio and video with the AT&T Wireless Broadband Laptop Connect Card, because it seemed like the internet connection was somewhat choppy.

The AT&T Laptop Connect Card allowed me to connect to the internet pretty much everywhere I tried it out, but I often found that I could only get 3G service if I was using the laptop outside. Since the majority of my laptop use occurs indoors, this was not good. Overall, I wasn't that happy with the AT&T wireless broadband service and ended up canceling it after just a few months. If you are looking for wireless broadband internet, you might want to check out Verizon who has a larger and more reliable 3G network. At $60 per month, mobile internet from AT&T wireless just wasn't worth the extra expense to me.