Going mobile with a mobile hot-spot

If you use a PC card based EV-DO card or EV-DO phone, and don’t like to rely on public Wi-Fi hot spots, you need to take a look at this mobile accessory by Kyocera that Ed Holloway is talking about – The KR1 Mobile Router

Basically, it takes your PC card and then provides a WiFi connnection to others that you want to allow to share your EV-DO connection. Where this device really helps a lot is in allowing you to place the router where you have a good EV-DO signal and then it frees you from having to worry about losing your connection because you happened to move your Tablet PC or Origami to a different room.

Ed Holloway offers these benefits from his blog:

• Speed – even though it doesn’t make sense, the EVDO connection is faster (I’ve tested with online bandwidth tools) in the KR1 than it is directly plugged into a PC.
• Location,Location, Location – Unfortunately EVDO has all the same nuisances of using a cellular phone – it works great in some parts of the house / office / hotel room, and in other areas it has little or no signal.  With the KR-1 I can place it in the strongest area (The web config utility actually shows signal bars), and then roam anywhere else in the area via WiFi and not have to rely on a cellular signal.
• PC / Windows Issues – PC Cards are notorious for getting into bad states when the PC goes into a standby/sleep/hibernate mode.  EVDO cards are no different, and in many cases it requires a total reboot of the laptop or tablet PC to get the card working again.  5 minutes wasted.  The KR-1 removes this issue completely.
• Reliability – The KR-1 reconnects on dropped signals automatically, no more pulling up the EVDO dialer app to manually reconnect (and wait).  Very cool.

Here are the specs from the Kyocera site:

Enables wireless broadband network with 1xEV-DO PC card or phone*

Supports high rates up to 2.4 Mbps (typical download speed of 400-700 Kpbs)

Four Ethernet ports for wired connection

802.11b & g for wireless connection

Advanced firewall and security control

Easy configuration and set-up

Smooth migration to future 1xEV-DO releases

it is compatible with the following 32 bit 1xev-do cards:
Kyocera KPC650, Sierra AC580, Novatel 620, UTStarCom PC-5740

The router sells for $299