Bust through speed limits on the road with the Sierra Wireless AirCard 595, the fastest cellular wireless PC card available today. The AirCard 595 is one of four new devices for Sprint's EV-DO Rev A network, also known as "upgraded Power Vision." I tested the AirCard 595 in three Connecticut towns against the competing Novatel S720 PC Card. Sprint's third PC Card, the Pantech PX500, was suffering from firmware issues that didn't allow me to test its Rev A speeds; the company's Novatel U720 USB dongle wasn't yet available for sale.

An attractive card, the AirCard 595 sports a built-in, nonmovable antenna and an easily accessible external antenna port. The card lights up in a soft blue color when it captures a signal. Like all of Sprint's PC Cards, the AirCard 595 uses Sprint's Connection Manager software on Windows XP PCs. I found the software pretty easy to install, and it worked on the first try; it also coexisted happily with other Sprint and Verizon connection managers. You open a connection using Sprint's Connection Manager, a simple software panel. Depending on whether you're in EV-DO Rev A, the slightly slower Rev 0, or in much slower 1xRTT coverage, differently shaped arrows appear on the right-hand side of the panel. Mac OS X will be supported by the end of the year.

I found that the AirCard 595 got faster download speeds, both in Rev A and Rev 0 coverage areas, than either the Novatel S720 or the older Novatel Wireless S620 card. Rev A downloads averaged 1.07 Mbps, with uploads averaging 328 Kbps. That was about 100 Kbps faster on downloads than the S720, and the AirCard 595 beat the S720 on 16 out of 20 individual transfer tests. Pings to our basket of Web sites averaged 179 ms.

In Rev 0 coverage areas, the AirCard 595 downloads averaged 903 Kbps, about 50 Kbps faster than the S720 and S620, with 219-ms latency. All EV-DO cards perform pretty much the same on Rev 0 uploads, with speeds in the 120- to 140-Kbps range.

The Novatel S720 did perform slightly faster on uploads in Rev 0 coverage areas, averaging 347.7 Kbps to the Sierra AirCard 595's 327.6 Kbps. But that's not a big difference, and both cards peaked at an even 800 Kbps.

With a new two-year contract, the AirCard 595 has the same $99.99 price tag as the Novatel S720. Unlimited usage runs $59.99 per month with a two-year contract. The AirCard 595 can also be used with Sprint's Linksys Wi-Fi router to spread broadband across a Wi-Fi hot spot.

The Sierra Wireless AirCard AirCard 595 is simply the fastest thing out there for connecting your laptop PC to the Internet in the growing areas where Sprint has coverage. It's easily worth the price Sprint is currently charging.