Verizon Wireless Broadband Connection hangs Windows

The company I work for just purchased Aircard 595's from Verizon to work on multiple laptops. However, when we use the Verizon program to connect to the broadband, it hangs Windows for 2-5 minutes on average. By hang I mean that I can click on programs I want to open, but they don't appear for about 5 minutes. This obviously first appeared in Internet Explorer since the first thing after connecting would be the web browser opening. However, I've tried opening other applications to no avail.

Opening IE or whatever apps before connecting does not work either. After opening IE and then connecting, Windows will not shift focus to IE or other programs for about 5 minutes even when they are clicked on in the task bar. I've checked task manager multiple times to just see System Idle Process having the majority of CPU usage most of the time.

My guess here has to be a software conflict, but it's troubling because we've had this happen on every laptop (same card) we just purchased plus one that was purchased months ago, and they all have different configurations. Also, I updated the VZ software, and that didn't help. OS version is Win XP SP2. Any ideas here would be helpful.