Product Review: Sierra Wireless Aircard 300 for Windows

Introduction

Being connected wirelessly at decent speeds has been something I've craved for years. So you can imagine the excitement I felt at the opportunity to review this CDPD based wireless network card from Sierra Wireless. Though I was skeptical at first of both the CDPD coverage and data rate, I have to admit I am pleasantly surprised at how good it actually works.

About CDPD

The Aircard 300 is the industry's first wide area network interface card. Prior products were all modem based, meaning that you had to dial and make a connection. This card works seamlessly, like an Ethernet card. The software automatically connects as long as there is adequate signal strength. The communication technology used is Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD). This is an always-connected technology where you are only charged for actual data transferred, not connection time. (The data rate with CDPD is 19.2kbits/sec.) It is offered by several service providers in the US, such as AT&T Wireless and Bell Atlantic Mobile. It is also available in Canada, New Zealand, Israel, and parts of South America. The service provider also provides the ISP service. During this review, I used AT&T Wireless as the service provider.

The Installation Process

The installation process was a breeze. Support is provided for Microsoft Windows 95, 98 and NT, including the new Microsoft Windows 2000. There is also a version available for Windows CE devices. I used the card in my Sony Vaio notebook running Windows 98. Basically you just install the software, slap in the card, and you are ready to go! Sierra Wireless provides a nice little setup wizard call Wireless Expert. This steps you through the simple process of setting up your service provider. All you have to do is pick your service provider from a drop down list and enter your network address and some server information. The software then tries to connect to your service provider and let's you know that everything is working correctly.

Ready To Run!

At this point, all I did was run Internet Explorer and voila, I was connected to the internet! I was really impressed by the simplicity of setting this product up. The supplied software also comes with a couple of other utilities. The Aircard Toolkit is used for managing multiple accounts. The other utility, Watcher, was a really handy way to see the status of your network connection. It shows the signal strength, network activity, and power state of the card. I used the card during a few trips along the West coast and noticed that it could go in and out of service areas automatically, without any user interaction. The card also quickly goes into a low power mode when you are not transmitting or receiving data. There were some improvements that could be made to the Watcher utility. For example, there was an "always on top" feature which I really liked, but it would not remember this setting the next time you ran the program. While the utility was fairly small, it also would have been nice to have a smaller version available to keep at the top.

The Sierra Wireless Aircard 300

Another thing that really impressed me about this product was how little power it used. My expectation was that my battery life would be cut in half. However, I only noticed a slight difference. While the typical transmit current is 500mA, the power management quickly reduces this back down to 2mA when not transmitting. Of course this is very much dependent on usage patterns. Most of my use was with browsing web pages. In this case, you download a page and while you are reading it, the card is automatically put into the sleep mode.

Conclusion

As my first experience with a wide area wireless network card, the Aircard 300 was very impressive. For those who travel frequently, this is an excellent way to stay connected while you sit at the airport waiting for your next plane. While the 19.2kbits/sec data rate is definitely no comparison to my cable modem, it is adequate for checking email and simple web browsing. Now, if only it was a compact flash format so I could fit it into one of these new handhelds!