Sprint controls what they allow and disallow in their terms of service. Obviously their network is capable of providing service to laptops, since they sell cards that permit you to use the network in that way. Obviously the Treo supports this usage, as PDANet and other applications prove. And obviously people want to use their network and the Treo in this way. (As a data point, this blog entry had the single highest level of traffic for the day of posting of any I've ever written.)
My point is that disabling a feature of the phone in order to enforce a bad pricing policy doesn't make it a better pricing policy. I do not want and will not accept a second piece of hardware, a second phone contract, and a second monthly service fee in order to get functionality one of each of those could *easily* provide.
Sprint is looking at PDANet and related applications as a threat. That's incredibly stupid. They should instead sell two tiers of pricing for their Vision service -- one for normal phone use and one for "road warrior" use. I would bet that properly marketed, many more people will sign up for "Road Warrior PCS Vision" at a higher price per month than would ever sign up for their connection card offering. They stand to increase their profit by going after demand instead of looking to prevent early-adopters (which all Treo owners are at this point) from using the features of their $600 phone.
