Just about every business person, college student and family member has WiFi built into their computers. What we are now starting to see, more and more, are PC vendors marketing mobile broadband, embedded on our notebook computers.
Notebook computer vendors are more aggressively pushing to have you buy a mobile wireless card that's built into your computer. Nothing to lose, nothing to break - and you might just get a sweet deal on the monthly service charges.
What's exciting about this emphasis from WiFi to mobile broadband is that not only can you access the Internet anywhere in the country, but if your travels take you across borders you can use your mobile broadband connectivity there as well. Many vendors are using dual GSM and CDMA wireless technologies, with GSM being quite popular outside of the US, in their mobile broadband platforms.
Regarding the world of cloud computing, If you are a "traditional" mobile professional you have software installed on your computer and save your data to your hard disk or USB key. You are probably more familiar with "My Documents" or your "Desktop" than you are with the local streets in your neighborhood.
One of the ways you can really increase your security is to not save any data on your computers hard disk, but access it only online.
Due to the increased available of Internet access (wired or wirless) around the world you can be more assured of accessing your data via a web browser and not have to access the data on your hard disk. By better planning your trips you can be more assured of staying in a hotel with Internet access and scope out which clients can provide you with a computer or at least Internet connectivity for your own laptop.
Strategically, planning a world in which you access your data in the cloud means that your concerns of someone stealing the data stored on a notebook, or losing the data due to a hard disk failure or some other issue is no longer an issue.
So what does this all mean? WiFi is good, but if you are a mobile warrior -- often on the go -- you need to consider mobile broadband. Accessing your data via a web browser, is not only a more secure way of computing, but often easier due to the increasingly availability of Internet connectivity.
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About the Author: Ramon Ray, Technology Evangelist, is the editor of Smallbiztechnology.com and author of Technology Solutions for Growing Businesses (Amacom). He is co-producer of the Small Business Summit events.
Ramon is a member of the Small Business Trends Expert Network.