You can't miss the slogan--it's plastered everywhere. "Twice as fast. Half the price." Just this morning, in fact, Apple posted a bunch of new ads that repeatedly drive the point home about the 3G wireless speeds of the iPhone 3G as surely as if we were all strapped to that chair from A Clockwork Orange.

While there's been no end to the dispute over the true cost of the iPhone 3G when you factor in the monthly service charges you'll be handing over to AT&T (along with your firstborn child), less attention has been given to actual wireless data speeds of the iPhone 3Gs versus the original iPhone. Our fearless leader, Jason Snell, did run some speed tests in the course of reviewing the iPhone 3G , we wanted to look a little further into the matter and find out if the iPhone 3G really twice is as fast as its predecessor.

[ Read Tom Yager's review of the iPhone 3G and its over-the-air capabilities | See InfoWorld's guide on how to make the new iPhone work in your business | Analysis: Why iPhone 2.0 won't rule the enterprise roost  ]

The answer? I'll have to say definitely maybe, if you can excuse the reference to the recent Ryan Reynolds weeper. We were spurred to action by an e-mail from reader Jeff F. of the great Metro-Boston realm, who said the speeds he was getting on his iPhone 3G were a mere shadow of those that AT&T and Apple were touting; he also pointed us to a MacRumors forum thread of people having similar problems. So, we decided to do a little informal testing of our own.

Since I too reside in the Bay State, I fired up my black 16GB iPhone 3G and set to work running speed tests. The results were ... intriguing, and also, to some extent, explanatory. Those of you who listened to our recent Macworld Podcast roundtable on the iPhone 3G may recall that I was the lone defender of the EDGE network, as well as the one who was least impressed by the 3G's much-ballyhooed speed increase.

Turns out there's a reason for that: while AT&T's 3G network has very good coverage in the Metro-Boston area, according to the company's coverage map, the network itself appears to suffer from what you might call "general listlessness." In fact, at times, it's (unbelievably) downright slower than the EDGE network, if my test results are accurate.

After reporting my findings to the Justice League that is Macworld's crack editorial team, my colleague Jon Seff was gracious enough to spend the time to perform the same tests from Macworld's offices in San Francisco.

This is where the results get even more bizarro. While San Francisco's 3G network is apparently about 1.6 times faster than Boston's 3G network, Boston's EDGE speeds are about twice as fast as San Francisco's. So while the difference between Boston's 3G and EDGE networks does seem pretty close to the 2x number that Apple is touting (on average, anyway), San Francisco sees much better results, to the tune of 6.5 times faster.

It's also interesting to note from our tests is that in both Boston and San Francisco, EDGE speeds were fairly consistent, while 3G speeds seemed to show more fluctuation between individual tests.

Of course, there are any number of caveats here: despite the fact that I ran three tests per network from i.dslr.net, iNetworkTest, and TestMyiPhone.com, as well as using iNetwork Test's native iPhone application, my phone is but a single data point, as is Jon's (and we each tested only at one time and one location). Geo-location will clearly show you that we're not even in the same neighborhood as real scientific results.

Apple's iPhone drew criticism when first released because of tepid enterprise business support. Small businesses felt the pain of iPhone envy more sharply than their enterprise counterparts because of the high up-front cost of the first iPhone and the back-end support requirements for high-end e-mail and communication servers.

But the second generation of iPhones, the new 3G version, answers almost all these issues. Costs are down to below what many people pay for other smart phones. Integration to existing e-mail servers is faster and easier. Yet those back-end servers still require heavy investment up front and technical support later, especially when loading up a new Microsoft Exchange 2007 server.

[ Read Tom Yager's review of the iPhone 3G and its over-the-air capabilities | See InfoWorld's guide on how to make the new iPhone work in your business | Analysis: Why iPhone 2.0 won't rule the enterprise roost  ]

Let's talk about two options for the small business iPhone users who are eager to get full smart phone and mobile computing advantages from their new shiny faced toy, er, iPhone. Neither option includes Microsoft Exchange, saving money and time while supporting the miracle of communication (at least according to Apple).

Jeffrey Bernstein is the president of Digital Desktop Consulting in Los Angeles, a firm with ties to the entertainment business. As such, Bernstein is a long-time Macintosh user and advocate, and supports many customer offices filled with Macintosh systems. Bringing iPhone support to his clients was not an option but a demand.

"We're hands-on and act like an outsourced IT department for our customers," Bernstein says. "Many are the unsung heroes in media, like graphics designers or flash programmers whose work you see on every TV show and many Web sites." Most companies he supports employ 10 to 60 people, and Digital Desktop Consulting provides services ranging from occasional visits for new installations to complete support of all office and production computing.

How does Bernstein support iPhones for his customers? By using MailServer from Kerio Technologies. MailServer provides all the messaging features of Exchange for less money and requires fewer add-ons for security and messaging support. In addition, MailServer software runs on Windows, Linux, or Apple servers. Bernstein has installed 30 or so systems and provides constant remote management for about 10 of them.

"Many of our customers are moving to the iPhone from Palms and BlackBerries," Bernstein says. "BlackBerry support requires the Blackberry Exchange Server, and iPhones avoid that extra cost. Plus, most of my customers use Macs, so they're more comfortable with the look of the iPhone."

Kerio's MailServer includes over the air synchronization, push e-mail, push tasks, and push calendaring. Another nice feature is "remote wipe" that allows a network administrator to delete all information from a lost iPhone. "Three of my customers lost their phones last week," Bernstein says.

Bernstein was the first Mac reseller to sign up with Kerio. Early on, he called them regularly pushing for changes and new features, but hasn't made those calls for the last two years. "My customers appreciate the stability, ease of use, and support for multiple platforms. Kerio actually has feature parity, which a lot of others don't."

Another option for iPhone support is a hosted mail provider. There are scores of companies that provide Microsoft Exchange support, now including Microsoft (and it is promising to add more hosted options in the future). Well, scores understates the number of options a bit. Searching on "iphone exchange hosting service" turned up 346,000 listings.

With those numbers, picking an Exchange host to pay along with the higher AT&T rates on the iPhone 3G becomes an almost overwhelming choice. I suggest you leverage as many features as possible of your new iPhone, and get as many other advantages as you can.

A hosted collaboration service I've talked about before, HyperOffice, added iPhone support to its Exchange hosting service, but it added an extra twist. Since the iPhone can run applications, HyperOffice supports shared document storage and collaboration. If you can stand the iPhone keyboard, you can work on shared documents from the same source as your e-mail hosting.

The iPhone's browser support over 3G turns the Apple version of a smart phone into a real work phone with support from services like HyperOffice. Quite a switch from all the anti-business complaints Apple heard for the initial iPhone release, isn't it?

People ask me if I'm using an iPhone. Nope. Apple hasn't given me one, and I didn't expect them to. But I'm not even considering an iPhone until the QWERTY keyboard runs in landscape mode so I can use two thumbs. Now it runs in portrait mode forcing me to use one finger. Way too slow, and not at all cool.