EDGE cards

I'm looking at getting a Sierra Wireless Aircard 775 to use with my MobilePro and Jornada, but I have a question I've always wondered about: Is there a contract for these cards or do you get free internet like on a Kindle? Also, are the drivers processor-specific?

The contract is associated with the SIM card that you put in it. However, some of these PCMCIA SIM card adapters come with firmware locking them to a specific carrier, meaning they will only read SIM cards from that carrier. (There is a way to unlock them, but I'm not familiar with the process.)

MobilePro Master, what OS is running on your MobilePro? If WinCE 4.2 then Sierra Wireless Aircard 775 can give you flawless EDGE and Sierra Wireless Aircard 850 can give you 3G.

As for Jornada and MobilePro with WinCE3.0 you can get Sierra Wireless Aircard 775 to deliver EDGE quite well (with some drawbacks), but you can almost forget about reliable 3G (at least on Jornada, did not try on NEC900). Please have a look at these recent threads:
http://www.hpcfactor.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=16183&posts=5#M148042
http://www.hpcfactor.com/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=16164&posts=16&start=1

You better check first the card on a XP laptop to see if it is not locked to a certain provider and if it works flawlessly.

Please report back you experience. Good luck!

I'm using a MobilePro 790, not a 900. it's a common mistake though as people usually associate the MobilePro name with their latest model. Anyway, I don't need very fast internet, I just want for my mom to be able to check her emails on the Jornada 690 (don't know if you thought that was a 720) and since we use Comcast's servers for our emails, it works flawlessly with Pocket Outlook. Anyway, we use Verizon so there are no SIM cards and I don't know if my parents would be willing to set up any kind of contract with a different company especially if it isn't really cheap. Any of those Sierra cards would really apply to what I was saying, but I was saying the 775 because it's the latest one I saw that works with HPC2000.