Given carrier reputation and our own iPhone call drops, we were pretty surprised to discover, through careful testing in 12 markets, that AT&T's has pretty consistently the fastest 3G network nationwide, followed closely—in downloads at least—by Verizon Wireless.

Let's get this straight right away: We didn't test dropped voice calls, we didn't test customer service, and we didn't test map coverage by wandering around in the boonies. We tested the ability of the networks to deliver 3G data in and around cities, including both concrete canyons and picket-fenced 'burbs. And while every 3G network gave us troubles on occasion, AT&T's wasn't measurably more or less reliable than Verizon's.

It was measurably faster, however, download-wise, in 6 of the 12 markets where we tested, and held a significantly higher national average than the other carriers. Only Verizon came close, winning 4 of the 12 markets. For downloads, AT&T and Verizon came in first or second in nine markets, and in whatever location we tested, both AT&T and Verizon 3G were consistently present. If you're wondering about upload speeds, AT&T swept the contest, winning 12 for 12.

The Cities

Last year, we did an 8-city coast-to-coast test, and called Sprint the big winner. This year, we have results from 11 cities coast-to-coast, and even got to test (during what was otherwise vacation time) on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Also, unlike last year, we were able to test T-Mobile's new 3G network, active in all the markets we visited (except, at the time, Maui). For being such a latecomer, T-Mo did well, and the numbers show even more promise from them.

We tried to spread the love around this year, geographically, hitting cities we didn't get to last year (at the cost of losing a few from '08). Besides Maui, we hit Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco/Bay Area and Tampa.

The Methodology

Our testing regimen was based on the same scheme as last year: We picked five locations in each city, including at least one "downtown" location that was considered a suburb. The selections were arbitrary, or fixed but logical—landmarks, residences, etc. (Note: Due to timing constraints, Chicago and Maui only had three test locations.)

Our hardware consisted of two identical stripped-down Acer Timeline laptops running Windows Vista, and four 3G wireless modems requested from the carriers. We allowed them to make the choice of hardware, simply asking for their "best performing" model. Once up and running, here are the tests we ran:

• Bandwidth & Latency: Speedtest.net - Reports upload and download bandwidth in megabits per second, as well as ping latency in milliseconds. We performed this test five times at each location on each modem.

• Pageload: Hubble images at Wikimedia - A 4.42MB web page with 200 4KB thumbnails, it was fully reloaded three times, and timed using the Firefox plug-in YSlow. The three time readings were averaged.

• Download: Wikimedia's Abell 2667 galaxy cluster photo - This single 7.48MB JPEG is a clear test of how fast you can download stuff from the cloud, and again, we hard refreshed this file three times, and measured time using YSlow for an accurate human-error-free reading.

This was a test of 3G performance. Even though Sprint and its tech partner Clearwire have intrepidly released 4G networks in half of the tested markets—Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Maui, Portland and Seattle—we only tested Sprint's 3G network. The reason should be obvious: While we performed the test with laptop cards on PCs, it's supposed to serve as a test of the network's ability to deliver service to all devices, including smartphones, dumbphones and laptops. Show us a Palm Pre WiMax edition—better yet, sell 100,000 of them—and then we'll switch it up. And while you may argue that this 3G test still doesn't adequately reflect your experience with your iPhone, at least it's the same network, and may serve to rule out AT&T's data pipe as the independent cause for all those infamous dropped calls.

(On a side note, when multiple carriers release 4G networks, we'll definitely conduct a comparative test of them all, using new parameters, and focused around laptop use.)

The Results

Now that you know how we ran the test, here are the top finishers in each market, plus some pretty bar graphs showing you how bandwidth compares.

Though we tested for uploads and downloads, we focused our additional tests on the downstream, as it's the more important direction, in the minds of most consumers and most carriers. The anomaly there is AT&T, which has dramatically good upload bandwidth, even when its download bandwidth doesn't keep up. Fast uploads are a priority for AT&T, and will soon be for T-Mobile, which recently turned on faster uploading in NYC, which you can see in our test results. Meanwhile, although Verizon technically came in second in uploads as well as downloads, it doesn't seem to treat this as a major priority.

When it came to downloads, though, the competition was markedly stiffer:

Atlanta - AT&T, followed by Verizon
Bay Area/San Francisco - AT&T, followed by Verizon
Chicago - AT&T, followed by Verizon then Sprint
Denver - AT&T, followed by Verizon
Las Vegas - Verizon, followed by AT&T
Los Angeles - AT&T, followed by Sprint
Maui - Verizon, followed by AT&T
New York - AT&T, followed by T-Mobile
Phoenix - Verizon, followed by T-Mobile
Portland - T-Mobile, followed by Verizon
Seattle - Verizon, followed by T-Mobile
Tampa - Sprint, followed by AT&T

Is That The End?

No. We've compiled the following gallery with all the data from each test location in the 12 markets, so you can see on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood level who won what. This also includes latency, pageload and download numbers, so you can track the performance in several ways. (The data above is bandwidth, though as you'll see, that was generally representative of the overall performance. If a carrier was tops in bandwidth, it was usually tops in download time.) These tests are all just "snapshots in time," as the carriers like to say, so feel free to bitch about where your experience doesn't reflect our results. We stand by them, but acknowledge that network performance is changing all the time, and experiences very regular hiccups.

Regarding latency, you'll notice it didn't appear to affect actual user experience—3G isn't really up for Modern Warfare 2, if that's what you're thinking—we will gladly show you latency averages, as well as pageload and file download averages, broken out for every market on the test.

Special thanks to all of the excellent testers we enlisted, Mark Wilson, Chris Mascari, John Herrman, Kyle VanHemert, Dan Nosowitz, Matt Buchanan and Rosa Golijan from our own team, along with Tamara Chadima and the indefatigable Dennis Tarwood. You guys were troopers, and I'm pretty sure FedEx either loves you or hates you. Thanks to John Mahoney for helping develop the initial tests that we've continually refined, to Chris Jacob for mapping all the locations, and to Don Nguyen for the mad number crunching—you truly are a spreadsheet pimp.

Note: Some of you may have noticed that San Diego is among the cities highlighted on the top illustration—and that Maui is not. The reason is that while we did testing in three great San Diego locations, one of the locations didn't get any Sprint or T-Mobile service, and the already fairly thin dataset was rendered too compromised for any kind of usable report. As for Maui's absence, Maui's just too far out in the Pacific to make for a pretty map shot.

When we say we have specifications, boy, do we mean it. One of our connects has sent us the full rundown on Motorla's Opus One (their first iDEN Android handset) that we revealed a little while back.

The features on the device are actually pretty reasonable, and we'd imagine it to sell for a reasonable attractive price-point at release. The Motorola Opus One will run Android 1.5 with iDEN service enhancements, make use of a "Zeus" CPU, and will feature a 3 megapixel autofocus camera.

• 3.1? hVGA 320×480 capacitative touchscreen display
• 3 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash
• Accelerometer
• Proximity sensor
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
• Bluetooth
• microSD card slot
• 2.5mm headset jack
• Home, Menu, Back, Speaker buttons are capacitive buttons with haptic feedback
• iDEN PTT & PTX
• Android LBS which is integrated into the iDEN GPS engine
• "Enterprise email"
• Plastic-molded housing with some rubberized texture finishes
• 58mm in width, 118mm in length
• 100g weight
• 512MB Flash / 256MB of RAM
• 64k and 128k iDEN SIM card support
• A-GPS
• Motorola dual-mic technology noise-canceling for noisy enviroments
• Flash Lite v3.1.x
• Some of the preloaded apps include: corporate email client with ActiveSync support, MOTONAV navigation app, barcode scanner, and document viewer.

That's what we have for you on the Motorola Opus One at this time. Not the most mind-blowing Android device, but with it being an iDEN device and all, we'lll cut it some slack and even say that it could do reasonably well at launch.

BGR features the latest tech news, mobile-related content and of course, exclusive scoops.

For anyone who's ever been caught truck partying or pantsless on Street View, a brave pigeon in Los Angeles has taken the fight to the Google Van.

Of course, we'll never know who the true identity of our avian avenger, but it's good to know that he's out there, watching over us, ready to unleash hell guano in our darkest hours. [Google; Thanks, Scott!]

Apple has released a graphics firmware update for the new 27-inch iMacs which will hopefully fix the flickering screen issue plaguing many users. Has anyone downloaded it yet? And is it making a difference? [Mac Rumors]

New Atom chips from Intel means better netbooks, right? Sorta. Here's the skinny on the new netbook brains.

Pine What?

Okay, so one of the big things about the new Atom chips is that for the first time, it integrates a graphics core and a memory controller directly onto the same die as the processor. This whole platform, that is, the processor, graphics and memory controller is "Pine Trail," while the processor by itself is "Pineview."

More specifically, the graphics core is 45nm die shrink of Intel's GMA 3100, redubbed GMA 3150, that runs at 400MHz. So, not only does it still suck, it also doesn't hardware accelerate H.264 video as AnandTech points out, meaning it's completely useless for Flash video, even with all of the new Flash acceleration hotness Adobe is delivering next year.

Instead, netbook makers will still have to bundle, at the very least, an "HD decoder" that accelerates H.264 for decent Flash playback, and it's not anywhere near Nvidia's Ion in terms of graphics performance. (This chip from Broadcom, to be precise.) And, not that you'll be pushing 1080p video out of your netbook, but video res is capped at 1366x768 out of the HDMI and DVI ports. Bottom line, Intel's stock offering still blows goats when it comes to video, and we're still waiting to see what Nvidia's going to do about it, given that they can't plug in Ion the way they used to. (Anand speculates they might just tack on through a PCi Express port.)

These are the three chips Intel's launching today, only one, the N450, is for netbooks, and as you'll notice, it's 1.66GHz single core chip (Intel thinks that's just fine) and supports just 2GB of RAM. The improvements you'll see with the N450 over the current Atom chips aren't exactly explosive—they mostly come from faster memory, and even Intel admits they're incremental.

Sure, it's 20 percent more efficient than the last Atom chips, but if you want remotely decent video performance in a netbook right now, it looks an Nvidia Ion-based system is still the way to go, even with Intel flashing new silicon. If you can stick it out for another month, it might be worth seeing what's a little further around the bend. [Intel]

Everywhere I look, I see faces. The cabinet is looking at me. The lightswitch is looking at me. The cereal is looking at me. And it's all because of your submissions to this week's Anthropomorphism Shooting Challenge. The winners:

Second Runner Up

Death Face on Muni Track in SF; Nikon D50; 55-200mm; Shot at 200mm; ISO: 200; f/5.6; 1/20 sec
-Tyler Ball

First Runner Up

This image was taken with a Nikon D200 using a 18-200mm lens in aperture mode. ISO was 200, focal length was 80mm (35mm equiv = 120mm). Exposure time was 6 seconds.
-Joe Hale

One Half Runner Up

"A robot is hiding behind the trees" I love walking the streets of Shanghai. This picture was taken with my Leica D3, f/2.8, 1/15 sec., at ISO 200.
-Ariel Borremans

Winner

Camera: Nikon D60; Lens: 50mm F1/8; ISO: 100; "sad Robot" Guess he didn't like the New York Snow...
-Jacob Santiago

Thanks to everyone for participating. There are so many fantastic shots in the mix, you'll never want to throw out anything again...lest you doom an innocent object to rot away, smiling in a dump.

For $15 a month, a Zune Pass subscription is a pretty great deal. The only catch, seemingly, is that you also have to pony up a couple hundred bucks for a Zune. Except! Turns out you don't. PocketNow shows how:

The site makes the excellent point that the music you get on Zune Pass—unlimited song downloads, 10 of which you get to keep every month—is protected under the same DRM supported by Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center. The video above explains the process in detail, but the gist is that by using the Zune desktop software, you can sync your downloads to Windows Media Player and onto your phone. You may miss out on some features that the Zune HD carries, like the ability to stream music wirelessly and to email your content to friends, but that's a small price to pay for what you're saving yourself in hardware. [PocketNow via on10]

Man alive, even Japan's Red Cross Society is technologically-savvy. Commuters rushing through Akihabara station recently were treated to an augmented reality campaign urging them to donate blood. Anime girls in short skirts = instant win for the blood bank.

NEC TVs were set up in the Tokyo station and as someone walked past, their image was captured on the screen and superimposed with a blue wig or even a nurse's dress if they were lucky. What the hell blue hair has to do with donating blood is beyond me, but it's an innovative way to turn heads. Perhaps they should trial it in the Western world, where we're not already desensitized to the image of scantily-clad cartoon characters. [CrunchGear]

It's not the first iPhone GPS car kit, but Magellan's list of features might make this one of the better ones, and it doesn't even require you to use Magellan's own GPS app.

It's got a built-in GPS receiver, so it can work with your iPod Touch, as well as a charging port (obviously), Bluetooth for hands-free calling, audio-out for car stereo support, a built-in speaker and a noise-canceling speakerphone. And it's designed to dock with your phone even if you've got a case on it.

The price is a bit steep at $130, especially if you're just using this to charge and hold your iPhone, but if you're going to use your iPod Touch as a GPS device, this provides the "GPS" part of the deal. [Magellan]

Armed with stacks of blank CDs and the original outlaw Napster, I spent my college years giving and receiving mixes. As a member of the post-mixtape pre-playlist generation, I'd like to say a word in defense of the mix CD.

Everyone has a story about some favorite mixtape they had. Books have been devoted to elegiac tales of romance spooled onto Maxell cassettes—there are countless stories in this world about how each tape told tales of moondances and Lucy in the sky or colored girls who went doo-dee-doo-dee-doo. They were decorated with Lisa Frank stickers or drawings of Debbie Harry; the songs were grouped in themes, or started out slow and then picked up the beat, or they were about love without ever actually mentioning the word "love." Wasn't it so cute the way you had to use a pencil to wind the tape whenever it got tangled? Or you used scotch tape to fix a break. You have that story, don't you. Well, screw you. I'm sitting over here with an old compilation CD, and he's about had it with all the cassette adulation.

The year 2000 was a low period for mixtapes. Today cassettes have become a kind of pop-art symbol. You can't throw a stone on Etsy without finding a tape-inspired iPhone cozy or ring or soap. Earlier in the decade, however, cassettes just seemed old and silly. Why oh why would you want to make a mix tape when you could fit so many more songs on a CD? What's more, you could add songs using Napster.

Oh, Napster. My boyfriend found 30 versions of "Happy Birthday," burned them onto a disc and gave them to me when I turned 20. He had splurged and bought a computer that could burn discs. I then listened to them using the CD player in my PC! I had a stereo, but putting it in the computer made it feel extra special. The multi-functionality of it all! What could possibly happen next? The coffee maker would probably start making cereal.

Today, we expect that each of our gadgets can pinch hit for every other gadget, but back then this kind of versatility actually meant something. Oh, what is that you're saying, mix CD? If you broke, you could be replaced unlike your cassette brethren? And you could carry how many songs? And no one had to constantly jump up to press "stop" on the radio when a song ended. You didn't even need to use Napster—you could rip your own CDs to MP3s and then put hundreds songs on a single disc. Hallelujah.

In 2000, my friend Daisy made me a mix CD. She was junior at Mount Holyoke. It was mostly filled with Indigo Girls songs, but still. She's not the most technologically savvy person in the world, so I was impressed. Not only had she curated a set of several dozen songs, but she actually went to the computer lab! Just for me. Now that's friendship.

My old cassettes are caked with dust on a shelf in a closet. And the mix CD, you ask? The music is in my iPod and the disc itself? It's right here under my coffee mug, working to keep my tabletop unmarred. Like I said: it's all about the multi-functionality.

Anna Jane Grossman will be with us for the next few weeks, documenting life in the early aughts, and how it differs from today. The author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of ObsoleteTheBook.com, she has also written for dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post, as well as Gizmodo. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.

Top CC shot from smohundro on Flickr

During the last month, we've made, literally, hundreds of gift recommendations for every type of person you could possibly know. If you still can't figure out what to buy a loved one or a stranger, it's your fault. MEGA ROUNDUP:

GIFTS TO BUY FOR...

AUDIOPHILES

LUDDITES

SUNTANNERS

WHITE ELEPHANTERS

COMBO GIFTERS

DRUNKS

BOSSES

SKI BUMS

GOOD SAMARITANS

GAIJIN

WEIRD RELATIVES

KIDS

LOVERS

PERVS

DESIGNERS

PROCRASTINATORS

MANSION OWNERS

BAD DRIVERS

ASTRONOMERS

PET OWNERS

TRAVELERS

PHOTOGRAPHERS

CHEFS

RETRO-HOLICS

SCIENTISTS

APPLE FANBOYS

PC FANBOYS

GAMERS

STRESS FREAKS

AGORAPHOBES

TINKERERS

FILM STUDENTS

IDIOTS

READERS

ATHLETES

GRAPHICS CARDERS

DSLR WANTERS

POINT AND SHOOTERS

5.1 SURROUND SOUNDERS

SMARTPHONHERS

PC GAMERS

NETBOOKERS

LAPTOPERS

You're here obviously because you like what we're putting down; we as in the Gawker network of sites, and putting down as in the thing you're in the middle of reading right now. So why not help out?

We're looking for a Junior Office IT person in the NYC area. Here are the qualifications.

• Experience maintaining, building, upgrading, diagnosing and resolving PC and Mac hardware as well as software issues
• Know basic networking, Unix/Linux, unix editors (vi preferable)
• Willing to work with hardware as well as software
• Able to do heavy lifting
• Will be mostly doing desktop/laptop support, basic networking in the office with occasional trips to the data center to assist.
• This is a Junior position, the person must live in or around New York City

If you're interested, send an email to techjobs@gawker.com. If you email me I will delete your email, but not before printing it out and burning it.

I'm not a big fan of netbooks, but the Hackintoshable Dell Mini 9 is another story. Of course, that only applies to the ones that aren't catching fire and burning holes in wood floors.

Writing to Consumerist, Hannah describes what happened:

"Hi, last night I unplugged my laptop from its charger, carried it downstairs, and placed it on the wood floor of my living room.

I heard a loud popping sound and the room immediately filled with smoke while the laptop hissed and sizzled. It died down, I pushed it with my foot, and it stared hissing again. There is a large scorch mark on my floor.

It goes without saying, I am glad the laptop was not on my couch ...or in an airplane."

Consumerist put Hannah in touch with Dell, and they supplied her with a free upgraded replacement. They are also examining the crispy netbook itself, but have yet to release any details. Generally, when incidents like this occur, the battery is to blame. If Dell is at fault, I would hope that Hannah can get them to spring for repairs to her floor. [Consumerist]