Sprint PCS AirCard 580

Once you get a taste of high-speed, anytime, anywhere connectivity on your notebook, it’s hard to go back. That’s why Sprint may have to pry this excellent wireless broadband AirCard from our cold dead hands.

Within EV-DO coverage, we saw 350-Kbps download speeds and 80-Kbps upload speeds. In practical use, this meant that even the most complex sites loaded quickly and audio streamed smoothly. Don’t expect high frame rates on video, however, which proved only marginally watchable.

Outside Sprint’s growing 3G network, the AirCard falls back to 1xRTT technology, which means that you can retrieve e-mail at a tolerable dial-up pace. The card and software combo connected us flawlessly every time. We’re not quite ready to call this wireless “broadband” per se, but the decent speed and always-available coverage at an acceptable $40 monthly rate for 20MB of data has us ready for a future of ubiquitous connectivity.