BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : NOVEMBER 13, 2000 ISSUE
TECH BUYING GUIDE Test Drive: Cutting the Cord at Last Barreling down Fifth Avenue in the backseat of a taxi, I suddenly have to know the name of the American actress who starred opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless. I ask the driver, but he's from Uzbekistan and barely speaks English, let alone French. No luck there. Then I pull my laptop out of my bag, turn it on--et voila: I'm surfing to IMDb.com, my favorite movie-info Web site. I get the answer (Jean Seberg), skim a couple of reviews online, and then see what other movies she played in. Before tucking my laptop back into my bag, I check my e-mail, look at the forecast on weather.com, and glance at a few stock prices on financial sites. A wild fantasy of mobile Web surfing? Nope. And you can do it, too--although, as those ads on TV always warn, actual results may vary. Wireless Web access really does exist. We're talking the real thing, on a computer--not using one of those tiny-screened phones the cellular companies are hawking. But the kind of speed I got while careening through Silicon Alley is available only in New York, San Francisco, and a dozen other cities in the U.S. Other services offer much slower access in a lot more places--O.K. for e-mail and looking up an occasional Web page--but far from speedy. Wireless-data services ''still have a long way to go,'' says analyst Roberta Wiggins of Yankee Group Research Inc. ''There are coverage challenges, reliability problems, and performance problems.'' On my Fifth Avenue trip, I was using a Ricochet modem made by Metricom Inc. ( MCOM), a wireless-networking upstart backed by WorldCom Inc. ( WCOM) and Microsoft Corp. ( MSFT) co-founder Paul Allen. The service costs $70 to $80 per month for as much data as you can send or receive, and the modem itself will set you back between $100 and $300. It really is fast: 128 kbps, or more than twice the speed of the best dial-up modems. For general Web surfing, most users will find little difference between Ricochet and their office network connections. And even the limited availability will soon ease: Metricom plans to be serving nearly 50 metro areas by the end of next year. Most of the bigger cellular carriers also offer wireless data, but they're nowhere near as fast as Ricochet. Verizon Communications ( VZ) and AT&T ( T) use a system called cellular digital packet data (CDPD), which can reach speeds of 19.2 kbps by sending packets of data across the same frequencies as cell-phone networks. That's fine for e-mail and checking stock quotes but far too slow for full-fledged Web surfing. With Verizon's service, for example, some Web pages didn't load in their entirety. At the search engine Google.com, the page was often missing the window where you enter your query. Without that, it's kind of hard to find anything. As limited as they are, the services aren't cheap. In each case, a modem card for your PC costs between $200 and $700. A less appealing--if somewhat cheaper--option is to hook up via a cable linked to your cell phone, if it's equipped for data transmissions. AT&T's service will set you back $50 per month, while Verizon costs from $40 to $55 monthly--both for as much data as you can send and receive. And neither is truly nationwide, so you'll want to make sure the system works where you expect to be using it before you sign up. Sprint Corp. ( FON) offers a similar service, with one key difference: It's charged per minute, which means you had better be careful how long you leave your computer hooked up. Otherwise you'll eat through even the most generous buckets of cellular minutes in a jiffy. And that would make it pretty expensive to find out who starred... um...what was that actress' name again? By David Rocks in New York _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS The New Wireless Wonders Desktops What If It Breaks? TABLE: Desktops: Best of Breed TABLE: How the Warranties Stack Up Cool Tools: iFeel MouseMan Help Is Just an E-Mail Away TABLE: How to Hook Up with a Nerd If Web Surfing Is All You're Into... Artistic Apples Notebooks Take It with You TABLE: The Lowdown on the Latest Laptops Cool Tools: Computer Safe Test Drive: Cutting the Cord at Last ONLINE EXTRA: Staying Connected on the Road Handhelds Pocket Rockets TABLE: Wireless Acts Cool Tools: Slimpoint Stylus ONLINE EXTRA: Modo's Mojo Falling Web Phones A Long Way to Go TABLE: Getting on the Wireless Web Cool Tools: M130 Headset Test Drive: ``Turn Off That Coat!'' ONLINE EXTRA: Part PDA, Part Phone, and Pretty Tricky Net Services It's Not Just News TABLE: Who Offers What Cool Tools: Palm Portable Keyboard E-Mail with No Wires Attached Vortal Combat: The Early Years TABLE: Let Your Voice Do the Browsing INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

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