Vodafone’s HSDPA Mobile Connect PC Card offers roaming workers up to 1.8Mbit/s of downstream wireless bandwidth, and defaults back to ordinary 3G or GPRS speeds where HSDPA signals are not available.

The first laptop PC we tried the card in ran Windows XP Home and reported “error 619, port is disconnected” and would not let us connect to any network. Re-installing the card and software on another laptop running Windows XP Professional was trouble-free, however.

We managed to get a 3G connection in a couple of central London locations, though transfer rates varied and the signal occasionally reverted back to much slower GPRS rates. The speed test at ADSLguide.org.uk recorded 1.17Mbit/s downstream and 340kbit/s upstream, while downloading a 7.92MB file took two minutes and six seconds.

We found the general browsing experience patchy, with occasional long pauses presumably caused by fluctuating volumes of traffic on the 3G network. Accessing web-based email showed consistently good performance, and streaming a video from Soccernet.com worked well, though with some pauses and interruptions.

The software is easy to install and use, with separate tabs for mobile networks, WLAN links, SMS, email, browsing and usage statistics to keep track of how much data you are transmitting.