I do most of my computing sitting at my desk, but every so often I need to take my show on the road. For today's installment of I am connecting only over AT&T 3G wireless to see if it can deliver when the need arises.

Most of the time that I go mobile, there is Wi-Fi aplenty. Between Starbucks and McDonald's alone there is a free hotspot every 63 feet or so. That means that nine times out of ten--or maybe even 99 times out of 100--I would be fine just using the Wi-Fi capabilities of the iPad 2 itself. But, if I am on a road trip, or in a hotel with crappy Wi-Fi, I need to be able to use the 3G networking.

For those who have a 3G-enabled iPad--whether AT&T or Verizon version--it is as simple as just turning it on. However, if you I made the conscious decision to go with the Wi-Fi only iPad 2 knowing that my iPhone 4 is on me 24/7 and that it makes more sense from a to share the bandwidth rather than have two separate data plans.

I connected my iPad 2 to my iPhone 4 personal hotspot and did a bandwidth speed test. It wasn't very impressive. My iPad 2 got a sad 0.98Mbps download speed using the Speedtest.net app. My iPhone 4 got 4.86Mbps at the exact same time pinging the exact same server.

So, even though the two devices are sharing a connection, the iPad 2 bandwidth is obviously degraded by having to tether over the iPhone. I assume that using an iPad 2 with native 3G will perform better than using one that is trying to piggyback on an iPhone 3G connection.