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" LAS VEGAS \u2014 The Intel display\u2014it&amp;#039;s way to grandiose to call it a &amp;quot;booth&amp;quot;\u2014seemed to put a real stress on personal empowerment: Personal Media Creation, mobile hi-def video editing, etc. And tying it all together was Wi-Max, a long-range version of wi-fi. Sprint and Intel are cooperating on this. I talked to the Intel and Sprint representatives, and they told me that things are moving a lot faster than I had realized. Sprint will be rolling out test deployments in Washington and Chicago this year, and Intel plans to make its Centrino Wi-Max compatible by 2008. By then Sprint plans to blanket enough of America to cover 100 million people, all of whom it no doubt hopes will be customers.  They won&amp;#039;t all sign up, of course, but for those of us who like our Internet everywhere (a group that certainly includes me) it sounds pretty cool. And it will make sharing all that personal creativity a lot easier. I have a Verizon EVDO card, which gives me Internet access nearly everywhere, and I love it, but it isn&amp;#039;t nearly as fast as Wi-Max. That shows up at times, like now, when I&amp;#039;m uploading pictures or audio/video. Wi-Max will produce download speeds of 2-4 megabits per second (about ten times as fast as EVDO) and though the Sprint representative wasn&amp;#039;t definitive on what the upload speeds would be, he said they&amp;#039;d be &amp;quot;more symmetrical&amp;quot; than most existing services.  One place where this may make a big difference is with video-chat and videoconferencing, where slow upload speeds often get in the way. And as the experience gets better people will probably use these services more. Will ordinary voice calls shrink, squeezed between text messages and email on one end, and video chat on the other? I&amp;#039;m not sure, but we&amp;#039;re likely to find out. \u2014Glenn Reynolds Click here for all of Instapundit Glenn Reynolds&amp;#039; blogging for Popular Mechanics from CES. Plus, sign up for daily e-mail updates from Las Vegas.   (CLICK TO ENLARGE) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a1223/4210297/>