This morning, I’m on my way back to the city to see a friend who is in town. While taking the 1+ hour ride down the PA Turnpike and the Schuylkill Expressway, I’m testing out my lastest tech toy the Verizon MiFi 2200.

I’ve had a 3G EVDO modem for about a year and a half now, Sprint’s version of the Novatel Ovation U727 USB modem and while I probably don’t use it as much as I could, it’s been a life saver and a wonderful companion for my travels. There have been times where I’ve skipped paying the hotel’s wifi charges because I have my own, decent speed connection to the internet right in my pocket and that has been a nice option to have. The Ovation modem when I bought it was the smallest lightest USB Modem I could get. As I have both a MacBook for my personal use and a DELL Latitude for my work machine, I decided to go with a USB Modem. It seems more useful and to be honest, it was, that modem has been used not only on my machine but also on my boyfriend’s MacBook, my Mom’s MacBook and several other people’s machines so that I could get them on the ‘net. I even used it a few times to share my internet connection over WiFi with others using OS X’s Internet Sharing. Suffice it to say… it’s been a good investment.

Now although I’ve been quite happy with it, there have been some drawbacks. One of those issues was the size. Even though it’s quite small, it does protrude quite a bit out of the side of my MacBook and even more so out of the MSI Wind. More than a few times I’ve thought that the “antenna” was going to have been snapped off but so far.. so good. Add to this that the last software update to the Sprint Connection Software stopped me from being able to share my internet connection via WiFi. I had a feeling this was coming because Verizon supposedly does the same thing but I can’t sort out why. Its my connection, I have a cap, if I don’t exceed it, why do they care? There is still only ONE node on their network as my Mac is handling the proxy between the clients and their network. Enter the MiFi.

The MiFi is another product from Novatel and the concept is simple, it’s a 3G EVDO Rev A modem and a Wireless Router all built into a package about the size of a six credit cards stacked on top of each other. Small, light and most importantly wireless. You turn the MiFi on and you’re instantly a walking WiFi hot spot. Up to 5 people can share your WiFi (which baffles me as to why you can’t just use Internet Sharing on your Mac). I thought that this might really be the answer to my issues with my current EVDO modem setup. Both Verizon and Sprint will carry the product but as I’m out of my Sprint contract and I’ve heard Verizon’s network is bigger and faster, I decided to give Verizon a try.

I picked up the MiFi on Friday at my local Verizon store. The price is reasonable after $50 rebate, with a two year commitment it was $99, a one year contract brought the price to $169. Luckily I get a discount via work and my one year contract price was a lovely 79.99 so it made it a very easy decision.

I’m going to put it thru it’s paces and see how it performs over the next two weeks. If you have any questions about it, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you!