Right now I’m on Sprint.  After getting my new Acer Aspire One (AA1) super-mobile mini laptop, I went to sprint and upgraded my Pantech PX-500 broadband data card to a Sierra Wireless USB broadband data card.  Normally the card is $249.99 but I got it for $0 by extending my plan 2 years.

My 3G data plan through Sprint costs $59.99/mo.  I know, that’s an insane amount for a broadband Internet connection, and it’s not going to appeal to many people, but here’s why having a broadband data service is useful to me:

• I don’t trust public WiFi networks
• Even if I trusted public WiFi networks or used SSH tunnels for privacy/security, WiFi networks are not available everywhere, are finicky to connect to, and SSH tunneling through to my home network would require that I have a guaranteed network connection at home and a server to route my connections (how bad would that suck if I’m traveling or on the road and can’t securely get Internet access because A) the power is out at home, B) my router is down, C) my server is down, etc)

With a broadband data service, I can get very fast connections practically everywhere I can get phone service.  That means I can be sitting on a bench in a park and be updating blogs, managing web sites, sending emails, and generally being fully mobile.  Combined with my 6-cell AA1, which lasts up to 6 hours on battery, and is extrenely light (under 3lbs), you can imagine I can spend a whole day working fairly easily just about anywhere I choose too.

OK, so what does this have to do with my not getting an iPhone?

Well, I also have a data plan on my smartphone, which is $15/mo for unlimited access, at the same speed as my data card.  Guess how much unlimited on AT&T costs?  $35/mo.  Ouch.  So those of you surfing “unlimited” on iPhones, you’re paying $20/mo more than me.  That’s not the worst of it.  My data plan on Sprint is unlimited for $59.99.  How much does unlimited on AT&T cost?  Well, there is no unlimited on AT&T.  They charge $60/mo and include 5GB (gigabytes) data transfer with their plan and, after that, they charge $0.00048/KB.

Hm, doesn’t sound like much extra but here’s some math for you:

If you used 10GB worth of bandwidth (5GB over what’s included in the plan), you would pay:

5 x 1000 x 1024 x $0.00048 = $2,457.60.

OUCH

That’s kind of expensive for 5GB.

So some of you might say “OK, then I’ll get the $35 ‘unlimited’ data plan for my iPhone and use the iPhone as a modem. Aha!”.  Um, no.  AT&T has a “tethered” plan (what they call using your phone as a modem), which is $65/mo, which sounds a little better than my $15 + $59.99, but there’s still that nasty little $0.00048/KB “fine print”.  If you use either option in Canada, it gets worse, AT&T charges just a little more than 3x more.  So if I had either of those plan options, traveled up to Canada, and downloaded 5GB worth of data above what’s included, I would be slammed with a whopping $7,200 bill the next month.

Apparently it costs AT&T $60 + $7,200 to send you a DVD’s worth of data over their 3G network if you happen to be in Canada.  So if I had a Netflix account for $4.99 and happened to want to download a DVD movie to watch in my hotel room, Netflix would charge me $4.99 and AT&T would charge me $7,219.20.

So, as you can see, $59.99/mo doesn’t sound so bad after all.

I’ve been thinking about getting a “netbook” (sub-notebook) for a while, as a secondary laptop, and it’s a good thing I waited because recently Acer has added a new product line called Acer Aspire One with versions utilizing non-solid-state drives (in other words, regular 2.5″ hard drives) which allows them to install Widows XP.

I ordered one for myself last week, the one with 160 GB hard drive and 6-cell battery (~6 hours life).  Got it through Amazon for $399, no tax, free shipping.  That’s right, a fully capable new laptop for $399.

This is going to be really great for me.  Even though the screen size is only 8.9 (with a screen resolution of 1024×600), and the keyboard is slightly smaller than a full-size with a slightly awkward trackpad, everything else is more than I need for when I want to take a laptop while traveling or working away from home.

See, my main laptop is also my main system, and it’s gor quite a bulky 17″ screen.  Don’t get me wrong, my main laptop is fast and dependable and is great as both a main system and has been pretty capable when I need portability.  But it’s just too damn big and it’s getting cumbersome to lug it around when I need portability.

The new Aspire really solves a lot for me without skimping on anythign I really need when working remotely.  It’s got 3 USB ports, a SDHC slot, multi-reader, built-in 54g wifi, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, and 1GB RAM.

Since putting my encrypted mail drive onto a thumb drive for portability, it will allow me to easily manage my email on either laptop.  I also got a 16GB SDHC card which I can use as a background backup drive for the main/boot partition in case of a system problem — I use Acronis True Image to do image backups or partitions, which can be done in the background while I work.  I use TrueCrypt to create encrypted virtual drive files so, if I lose my thumb drive, nobody will be able to access my data and I can maintain regular backups very easily (just 1 file to copy).

As far as mobile internet, I don’t like using free wifi hotspots (I don’t trust them), but I have a Sprint broadband (3G) account and can get a 3G USB adapter compatible with Sprint, and be able to have Internet access wherever I have a phone signal (which is almost everywhere).  It also has a regular RJ45 jack for wired connectivity.

Seriously, this is going to be a great little gadget for me.  It will be so much easier for me to go have a coffee at a bookstore/library while having everything I need to wo work, in a package barely the size of a college notebook and less than 3 pounds…

It’s been a long time coming.  It was hard the past 8 years to not have a huge feeling of disenchantment over what the US had become and what it was starting to become.  My family immigrated us here with the hope of unlimited opportunities, with the notion that working hard to achieve success actually meant something.  That this country was a fair-minded place, where all things are possible.  That it was a country of honor and integrity, a country the rest of the world could look on with inspiration.

In the past 8 years, that has gradually eroded to the point of disaster, and it seemed that the voice of reason, the voice of common sense, and the voice of what is just and right was being more & more often left in the dust.

Tonight, that all changed, or at least now there is the reality that change is possible.  That hope can become reality.

It’s a great day to be an American.