3G - can anyone do me an idiots guide?

[yambabe]

OK thanks to you lot I am now looking into a fair range of little laptops. However, I have been advised that to get the mobility I require I am probably going to need 3G connectivity.

Not entirely sure what this is. It seems to basically be a phone network that you can use to connect a notebok pc or pda to the internet (via a sim card? or something else) when there is no other connection available.

Now the whole point of me having a small laptop is that I need to be able to log into a server with a fixed IP at pretty much any time and from any location. I may be logging in as a VPN (not 100% sure what that means either) or using something called "tsweb" so that I can access and run applications on the server or the office terminals via ?MSTSC?

So can anyone give me a basic not-too-technical overview of what 3G is and what it does? What it costs? Where you get it from?

Although I will not be paying for all this stuff I have been given the task of organising it, and I'm a bit out of my depth.
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[impaler]

Before I say anything, all usual disclaimers apply because I only vaguely know what I'm talking about myself
Ordinary mobile phones can access the internet via WAP (to get e.g. news headlines, rudimentary Google searches, etc.) 3G phones can do the same thing, except much faster, allowing access to 'normal' internet pages and services, tariff permitting.

What you need for a laptop is a 3G plug in card, which is basically a 3G phone that only does data, rather than being able to make voice and video calls. As long as the laptop has a card slot (which at least 99% do) then the card will be compatible. Presumably you get a SIM card that you have to stick inside the 3G card, in the same way as your phone SIM card.

These are 3G cards from some networks:
Orange
Vodafone
T-Mobile

To use one of these cards you'd need to sign a contract like a normal phone, except it will only be for data use and not for calls and texts and whatnot.

I don't know what areas you expect to use the service in, but if you are out of range of the 3G network (which doesn't have anything like the coverage of the 'old' phone network yet) then the card normally still works, just much more slowly.

A card like this will let you connect to your company's VPN (Virtual Private Network), which is basically a way of connecting securely to your company's network so that, to all intents and purposes, you have the same connections as if you were sat at your desk in the office.

I hope that makes some sense, hopefully someone more knowledgeable will be along shortly
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[numark1]

Do you know the prices of contracts and speeds of the cards??

[Psychofly]

I don't know exact pricing but 3G is expensive.
Before even considering this as an option look into the sort of coverage you're going to get in the areas you plan to use the connection.
Being someout out in the sticks myself (Scotland) I have 2 laptops that use GPRS to connect to the internet and then use VPN to authenticate with our network and then connects via an RDP connection (similar to the tsweb you mentioned). Of course this is all in theory. The coverage is unbelievably crap. The connection incredibly slow and the whole damn thing very unreliable and unstable. GPRS by the way is the same way older non-3G mobile phones will connect to the internet. It's the equivalent of a wireless dial-up modem for your PC - 56k connection (stated) but realistically a lot slower.
GPRS is getting better up here however but the prices we've had quoted on a corporate contract from Vodafone are astronomical. And I seriously mean astronomical. I don't have prices to hand coz our network services guys dealt with it but our money guys looked at it laughed then cried with fear in case we bought it.
From experience I'm not very impressed with what I've seen of Vodafone. I might be being unfair because I've never tried a wireless GPRS or 3G card from any other supplier so I can't compare but Vodafone's kit doesn't impress me. The software is crap however the support we've had trying to solve our connection problems is decent even though they've decided they can't help us as least they tried.
At the end of the day if you're moving about a lot and want to use a 3G connection I would only consider it if you're in a major city or have VERY good coverage in your area. GPRS I would avoid like the plague since it's so slow and unstable and if the local phone mast runs out of channels it will start dropping data connections in favour of voice. So if there are 20 lines and 19 are being used for voice and you're using 1 for data.. if someone else makes a call your data connection will drop. In some areas channels are dedicated to data so this doesn't happen but it really depends greatly on where you plan on using this kit.