The company I work for provides me with a laptop, it is usually with me in the truck.
I bought a wireless card for it and have good luck finding free connections to the Internet. Go on line and Google "wifi hot spots" and you can find lots of them in built up areas.
A few chain stores (Boarders Books for instance) provide free connections, I find if I park close to the stores I can connect.
Right now the lap top is dead, but they are getting me a new one.
A few of the things I find useful
Catalogs....while once I had to keep piles of product catalogs now I down load the latest ones and store them on the lap top.
I have had engineers email me changes (SK Drawings) on pdf and than I can print them out or work right off the laptop.
Handy when I take digital pictures, I can load them into the laptop find a connection and email them to whoever for comment.
Material orders...Esaily typed up, saved and sent to the purchaser.
The company has been seriously investigating a tablet PC based system (like the UPS guys use) The idea is for T&M jobs I will be able to enter all the material, time rentals etc, it will send the info to our shop where it will be priced by the shops software, sent back to the truck for printing and the customer ends up signing a work order that is already priced.
Anyway I really miss the laptop when it is broken.
