we just got ours upgraded. we went with the bad mofo of a phone the xv6800. it has wifi built in and a full 4 way gps chip in it. of course verizon locks you out (sorta) of the gps chip functions but that dosent stop a full blown community modding the software and getting it to work picking up sats in less than 10 seconds. mine will show me right at the end of my house in my office.
back to the subject.
this phone has the wifi built in so i can just turn on internet connection sharing and adhoc the connection to the laptop, or just connect the usb cable and allow the sharing there.
now one big thing, you really do need to have an unlimited data plan. if not you will sorely regret it.