On August 8th, I finally decided to bite the bullet and actually buy myself a PowerBook. I got myself a 1.5ghz 15” with the standard 80gb and 512mb with the addition of the superdrive. Two days later I got a PCMCIA EV-DO Verizon Card for mobile broadband internet, and discovered that the PCMCIA jack was busted on the PowerBook, so I took it back, and they gave me another one. I think by this point between the Mac Mini and having two PowerBooks, I’ve installed OSX about a dozen times. Two days later I ran into an issue for work where I planned on going to Huntington, yet one of my clients needed me to have internet access over the weekend. I went to Valley Fair and got myself a EV-DO access card. This card provides both 1X (144kbps) and EV-DO (384-1800kbps) access in areas where the specific type of service is available. Currently in the bay area EV-DO service is only available at the San Jose Airport, but it should have greater coverage hopefully by the end of the 3rd quarter, if not then it will be available by the end of the year. It will be like getting my Ricochet wireless back, the broadband mobile service from several years ago that I really miss a lot. With this new card I plan on making myself a StompBox (http://www.stompbox.com). This is basically a small embedded computer with the Verizon EV-DO Wireless WAN Card in it. The box also has a wireless network card to share access from the verizon service to any laptop that is within wireless range. People are building these boxes into their car, and adding cool internet related services such as GPS tracking with webcam snapshots. I plan on building at least one of these boxes. Build it into my car with webcam, gps and all. During the summer however it belongs on my boat. The webcam will provide me with remote pictures of Huntington lake while I’m in the bay area. The 144kbps service that i can get through this card is much faster than any dial-up connection that people up there are accustomed to.