My wife needs a laptop at her office to enter her patient info so I figured it’d be nice for her to browse the internet in her down time, but the building she’s in does not have wireless internet. There is a phone line that we’d need to pay to activate but the problem is she is on call at several locations during the week so we’d have to pay for a phone line for each as well as a dialup service, which in my estimate would cost about $50 a month or more and a lot of hassle and bills.
I’ve seen several wireless nationwide coverage options but don’t really know if the technology is at a point where it’s worth using, does anyone have any experience with this? Is it difficult to set up and what do I need in the laptop? Is the coverage good, like can we use it in the car when travelling? How is the speed? Are the prices outrageous?
Also if anyone has input on laptops - while I build my own PCs laptops are out of my league, so I was considering either getting something from Best Buy (like a Sony Vaio K37 or the smaller s250) or trying to wade through the hundreds of Dell laptops, does anyone favor one vendor over the other or have any suggestions for a fast laptop that could use wireless and comes with a DVD+/-R burner for me 
Oh and should we buy that $250 “we fix it if it breaks” policy or is this a ripoff?