EVDO cards rule. The speed and latency are good enough for working over ssh and other common development tasks like pulling up documentation on the web or installing a small gem or two. (Though I don’t recommend doing a git clone of Rubinius over EVDO). At Railsconf I used my EVDO card instead of the spotty wireless and was tapping away happily as everyone else struggled to load google.com.
Mine is from Verizon, $50/mo, worked on my Mac without as soon as I plugged it in, no software installation or configuration of any kind. So far I’ve been able to use it everywhere I’ve traveled (all within the US so far, though I’ll be racking up some of those $0.002/kb roaming charges in Canada on my way to Rubyfringe next month).
During a road trip to Santa Barbara last month, the pager went off right in the middle of farm country. I was able to crack open my laptop and take care of the problem without even pulling over. sshing at 75 mph is a whole new experience. (No, I wasn’t driving.)
EVDO has changed the way I work and travel. Cutting the tether means I’m no longer afeared of getting stuck in a waiting room for an hour - that’s just enough time to crank out a cool new feature.