If you need the Internet everywhere

I don't have a smart phone. I don't want one. If I want to know the forecast, I'll just, you know, look up.

But I have a friend who is forever googling away whatever we're talking about by talking into his smart phone. I can see the amusement factor, but I'm already busy talking to myself and formulating replies.

Another friend just sits there reading the news. I don't want to read the news. I frighten easily.

These folks might try this: the MiFi. It creates a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot that, because it’s the size of a porky credit card, can go with you everywhere. The MiFi gets its Internet signal from a 3G cellphone network and converts it into a Wi-Fi signal that up to five people can share.

David Pogue at The New York Times reviews this dandy:

You can just leave the thing in your pocket, your laptop bag or your purse to pump out a fresh Internet signal to everyone within 30 feet, for four hours on a charge of the removable battery. You’re instantly online whenever you fire up your laptop, netbook, Wi-Fi camera, game gadget, iPhone or iPod Touch.

Virgin Mobile has released one that costs $150, but here's the deal:

First, Virgin’s plan is unlimited. You don’t have to sweat through the month, hoping you don’t exceed the standard 5-gigabyte data limit, as you do with the cellular-modem products from Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile. (If you exceed 5 gigabytes, you pay steep per-megabyte overage charges, or in T-Mobile’s case, you get your Internet speed slowed down for the rest of the month.)

Second, Virgin requires no contract. You can sign up for service only when you need it. In other words, it’s totally O.K. with Virgin if you leave the thing in your drawer all year, and activate it only for, say, the two summer months when you’ll be away.

Third, the service price for this no-commitment, unlimited, portable hot spot is — are you sitting down? — $40 a month.

All this has Pogue flummoxed.

I’ve pounded my head against the fine print, grilled the product managers and researched the heck out of this, and I simply cannot find the catch.  

If you're interested, read the rest.