When we first got back to California with the boat in winter 2005 we tried using several WiFi services from various marinas. Most of the time this involved a lot of tech support, and then endless problems with automated billing services once we were signed up.

So in December we decided to give Verizon's laptop broadband service a try.

The modem, shown above, slips into the PCMIA slot in the side of our portable computer.

We called their tech support and they quickly walked us through the set-up procedure, which was very simple, and almost totally automatic.

Once the software is installed, it is accessed by starting the VZAcess Manager as shown above. Simply highlight the broadband service, and it "dials" and connects to the nearest antennae. We then run our e-mail and web programs in the normal fashion.

So how does it work? In terms of speed, this is much faster than a dial-up connection. We're not sure of the numbers, but we recently downloaded a 100mb folder of charts in 28 minutes. Normal e-mails are almost instantly received. Surfing the web is a little slower than we experience with a cable modem at home - but pretty close.

We were not sure what to expect in terms of coverage, and the folks at the Verizon store were a little vague on this. Here's the good news. Coming up the Pacific Coast of the US we've had coverage in every small port in which we stopped. This includes Noyo Harbor at Fort Bragg, Neah Bay on the entrance to Puget Sound (a really small town!), with offshore coverage as much as 20 miles from land along much of the coast line.

In Southern California we had good connections all the way to Catalina Island. Inside of Puget Sound, even when away from towns, so far we've always been able to connect.

It has been very nice to have constant access to e-mail, the web, and in particular a variety of weather sources we normally only expect at home.

The card itself can be moved between computers. If you want to share it, just remove it from one machine and install in the other. You just need the software loaded.