Consuming Interests: WiMAX Watch: Our first test and review of WiMAX enabled Lenovo laptop - News and tips for consumers on shopping, saving money, deals and credit

This past weekend, I got my first solo taste of Baltimore's new way to surf the Internet wirelessly -- with a Lenovo laptop that incorporates the new technology. The new network is called XOHM, and it's Sprint's wireless broadband network built specifically for heavy-duty Web surfing using WiMAX technology. No, it's not a new cellphone network -- rather, it's more like a massive Wi-Fi hotspot covering most of Baltimore.

To use the network, you can either buy a $79.99 modem for your home or a $59.99 ExpressCard to plug in to your laptop. But if you're looking to buy a new laptop soon, there's a chance you might end up purchasing one that's WiMAX-ready. Lenovo introduced five laptops last week that come with the new WiMAX chipset built in, and they sent us one to test. I played around with the ThinkPad X301, which is selling at a base price of $2,556.

I took it to some of my usual haunts around Baltimore, from the Waverly Farmer's Market to Patterson Park to Federal Hill. We're the first city in the country to get a taste of this next-generation network. So how does it rate? Hit the jump for my review.

First off, for all you Lenovo fans out there: my review will focus more on using Sprint's new WiMAX network rather than the laptop itself. The laptop we sampled had some extra bells and whistles, including 4 GB of RAM memory (standard is 1 GB), neat security features (fingerprint recognition, anyone?), and a DVD drive. Getting it WiMAX-enabled tacks on another $60. This laptop was fast, sleek and thin -- and muscular enough to easily perform with the Windows Vista Business edition.

I took this bad boy around Charm City and here was my experience:

Saturday, 9:50 a.m. Greg's Bagels in Belvedere Square (North Baltimore): It was a busy morning for these masterful bagel makers. I ordered up an everything bagel with cream cheese and Jail Island Smoked Salmon. While chomping away, I punched up Lenovo's "Access Connections" feature, which picked up the free Wi-Fi of another business. But WiMAX was a no-go.

This wasn't a surprise, since I checked XOHM's online map of their current coverage areas before I left my house, and saw that a large swath of North Baltimore wasn't covered yet.

Saturday, 11 a.m. Waverly Farmer's Market, near East 33rd Street (North/Central Baltimore): My wife and I picked up some fresh veggies and then sat on a median strip on 33rd Street to cheer on the thousands of marathon runners who jogged past us for the next 90 minutes. I opened the Lenovo again and it picked up several encrypted and public Wi-Fi networks in the area, but no XOHM. (With my other laptop, a Dell with a Verizon EV-DO cellular card, I was able to get online to check XOHM's map and saw that I was sitting on the edge of the network as it curved through Waverly.)

To juggle the various ways a computer user now has to get online, Lenovo has a little program called "Access Connections." I noticed the program wasn't responding well, so I decided to reboot the laptop. Eventually, I would unscientifically conclude that if I put the laptop in "sleep" mode and reawakened it, the "Access Connections" program got hinky; if I put it in "hibernate" mode, and then fired it up again, it ran smoothly.

The reboot did the trick. I connected to XOHM and tested the speed of my connection (using Speedtest.net for this and all subsequent tests). My download speed was a very fast 4.223 megabits per second, and my upload time was a modest 449 kilobits per second. (XOHM says performance can vary, but they try for a "high performance" range of 2 to 4 megabits per second on the download, and 0.5 to 1.5 megabits per second on the upload.)

That fast download speed -- far better than my wired DSL connection at home -- allowed me to watch videos on Hulu.com and Amazon.com -- at the same time -- plus do additional web surfing in other browser windows. Pretty darn good, I thought, while I Twittered about the marathon and ate an almond cheese danish while watching runners go by.

[ed note: Find out where in Baltimore Gus went next with the Lenovo in a post to come -- DD]

(photo by Karen Sentementes)