If you're tired of having to move furniture in your hotel room to get to the phone jack and plug in your laptop, consider signing up for MobileStar's new wireless Internet access. Stick an Ethernet PCMCIA card (you don't really have to know what that means) into your laptop and travel to one of the 200 hotels, 51 airports, and other corporate travel hotspots that have MobileStar Access Points installed, and you never have to worry about plugging in again. The card in your laptop uses a radio transceiver to link to Access Points installed in ceilings and closets across the country and thereby allows you to exchange data with your company's Local Area Network via the Internet. Data transfer using the MobileStar network is up to 50 times faster than with a modem and phone lines.
So far, MobileStar has agreements to put Access Points in American Airlines Admirals Clubs, and Sheraton, Holiday Inn Select, and Crowne Plaza hotels.
Users pay about $395 for the card then subscribe to the service, which gets them the required software. Billing is by the amount of data you exchange, not by your connect time. MobileStar estimates the average monthly bill will be around $50. Call (800) 966-9697 for information or visit www.mobilestar.com to get a list of Access Point locations.