Slashdot Mirror
3G Notebook In Review
An anonymous reader writes "Just found this review of a notebook with integrated 3G. It looks like you just slide a 3G sim into the machine and you get 3g data connectivity, it even drops down to edge or gprs if there's no 3g. The rest of the spec looks pretty awesome too with a 2.16ghz core duo chip and 2gb of ram. I want one of these! " Given my recent woes of getting my Nokia 6682 to actually work as a UTMS/EDGE modem for my Powerbook, the notion of integration is a really nice sounding idea.
March 2006 -- http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news.php?newsId=2939
in both America and Europe with the proper SIM card?
Isn't the G3 rather old by now? I would have thought that a Core Duo review would be more to the point...
Part of your woes may be that the Nokia 6682 doesn't support UMTS.
You want the Nokia 6680 for that. It's the same phone with one of the GSM bands dropped for UMTS and a VGA phone in the front for video phone calls.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Does that ring highly inconvenient with anyone else? Unless you have a dedicated 3G SIM card just for your laptop, you have to reboot each time you put in or take out the card.
*blinking cursor*
No, I'm serious; the review has a lot of big pictures and easy-to-read language, but it doesn't even once mention an OS. With this amount of built-in wireless stuff (3G, 802.11, Bluetooth), you've basically got yourself a very expensive brick if you can't get drivers for it. There's no information on what chipsets it uses for any of this.
I noticed that there's a Windows key on the keyboard, and in the absence of any other information I guess we're just left to assume that your only choice is the Beast From Redmond.
Pity, because I can't imagine they're going to sell enough of these at £1999 to people interested in Linux in order for a set of useful reverse-engineered drivers to be created, and thus you have a chicken-and-egg problem. Potential Linux users won't ever buy it because there aren't drivers, and there will thus never be the userbase to create the drivers.
What's more ironic is that Fujitsu is a member of the OSDG and sells a lot of high-end Linux stuff, but I guess (like IBM until they sold it off to Lenovo) despite their alleged commitment to it, you're SOL if you want to get a PC with anything except Windows.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I have been using a Sierra Wireless Aircard for a while though Telus Mobility (Canadian) and its been working out pretty well for me. The card itself is completely free if you sign up for a three year contract and if you choose the appropriate data rate montly fees are pretty reasonable.
Speed in major cities such as Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary make use of their 1X EDO protocol which is about the speed of a slow ADSL connection. In order places you get simple 1X with vaying speeds but I can average 13Kbs in transfer rates for large files.
The problem with these things however is the cost of the connection itself. I've been moving from place to place for a while now so getting an Cable/DSL connection for a month or two at a time is just not worth it.
However with Telus, most of their plans charge by the meg and that does not take very long to break if your using even just straight IMAP mail. So your generally stuck with their 'unlimited' service which is about 100$ a month (50$/month for the first three months).
For me its worth it, even though Halifax is still on plain 1X. But its certainly not for everyone!
I have T-Mobile's EDGE and GPRS through my Samsung t809 cell phone. Over the past 4 months my speeds have gotten faster and faster (upwards of 20K/s downloads), and some days I forget to log off before jumping on my WiFi at home. I'm very happy with the speed and the phone (even with many downsides).
I've been thinking of getting a separate EDGE PC-Card so my laptop always has access, but then I realized it is more of a hassle and a cost than necessary. I think this laptop will have similar problems.
First of all, you need a second SIM card, which usually means a second plan through your phone company. This could also mean a second contract and all that good stuff (depending on your provider). Also, this virtually locks you in to just that one PC. With my Samsung t809, I just link up via Bluetooth (automatic) from my laptop, my HP PDA, or even my home PC (my MCE box has bluetooth in case my home network is down). The benefit of being able to connect however I want is a great benefit.
I've even used my t809 to hook up from a customer's office when they had a T1 outage. I didn't realize that their traffic routed through the dial-up connection until the office thanked me for fixing their problem. Here's something that wouldn't have worked very well if the laptop integrated it.
I'm all for more integration, but Bluetooth really has made almost everything I used to desire pretty useless. I print via BT, connect to the web, even transfer files over WiFi (better battery life through BT).
Who here could actually use this over a BT cell with EDGE/3G?
However with Orange UK charging £1 a megabyte for data, actually using the thing could be expensive even if you get a driver for it. Admittedly, Orange and other networks in the UK do data bundles but it's still a (very) big chunk of profit for your network, and prohibitively expensive for many users.
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."
What wonders me more is why they did this. Are these 3G cards already so ubiquitous that fujitsi-siemens thinks the costs of adding it as a standard will be a selling point for a lot of users? Maybe they have a good view on the future but on the moment I'd say most people would rather add a pcmcia card to their laptop-of-choice than limit themselves just to this model only because it has the built-in 3G option.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
when I spend $3,557 on a laptop.
+ pounds+to+dollars&btnG=Google+Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=convert+1999
-- Boycott Shell
I know from my experience that U.S. Cingular's capabilities would be limited. They are building out their 3G network in America while Europe's 3G network is based on a totally different frequency (1900 MHz UMTS versus 2100 MHz UMTS). Not sure of other U.S. cellular providers that would be in similar situations, such as T-Mo and others. In Cingular's case the International roaming agreements aren't formally in place now and data charges are at $0.85 USD per kilobyte. Ouch!
Many phone companies will give you 2 sim cards on the same number, e.g. for use in your car. They are also pretty easy to copy. Better still would have been Bluetooth: did you know there is a bluetooth profile for "borrowing" a SIM card? Keep the Laptop (or whatever) anywhere near your phone and it can act as if it had the SIM card inside....
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Is there such a thing (on the black/grey market or whatever) as a reprogrammable SIM card?
Back in the day (early to mid 90s) it used to be fairly easy to find someone -- in my area it was always Israelis, don't ask me why -- who would clone certain brands and models of cellphones for you. Basically they could take a second phone, and make it appear to the network like a second instance of an already-existing phone. This was how a lot of crooks stole your phone service, but it was also handy because you could buy a second handset, and attach it to one number. Basically, just like having two phones in your house; two extensions on the same number.
I never actually did it, but I knew some commercial users that had it done, or said they did, and seemed to like it. I haven't heard of it being done in years though so I assume with the digital changeover the phone companies figured out some way to prohibit it.
I gotta imagine though that somewhere, in between designing new xBox mod chips, somebody has been working on making a reprogrammable SIM card that you could reflash and give a new address to, so that you could effectively duplicate an existing SIM. Assuming it wasn't so common that the network checks to see whether there are multiple instances of a particular SIM active at the same time, it seems like it would be able to give you the "multiple extension" effect. You could have one 'extension' as your computer, and another as your voice handset. Just set the computer to ignore incoming voice calls, and you'd be all set. You'd only have one service plan and you'd work off of the same pot of minutes using both phones.
I can imagine the cellular carriers would frown on this though, since they don't get to squeeze you for the extra dough on the second service plan.
Anyone ever heard if this is possible? It seems like something that somebody must have put some thought into, either on how to do it, or how to prohibit it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
A 2 year old review of the GSM Flybook
A 15 month old review of the GSM Enfora CF card
Those products, though very cool at the time, don't seem to have gone anywhere. Is the 3G and integration of this Lifebook the key to the revolution? Is it even usable as a voice phone?
--
make install -not war
It doesn't seem that useful, at least if 1) your phone and laptop both support Bluetooth and 2) you're carrying your cellphone anyway. You can just run the network connection over Bluetooth. So I'm told by my Cingular sales rep, anyway.
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
They could afford to subsidize a substantial part of the machine and still make their money back when they're charging that much.
can it download the latest ringtone from $.50 or The Black Eyed Peas?
is the model reviewed in the link.
Agreed. Although I haven't used it for any length of time (I set it up once as a sort of proof of concept to myself, for a few days) I can do the same thing with my iBook and my Motorola Razr. If I ever get put on a travel position, I'll call TMobile and get the unlimited data plan added to my line, and all I have to do is make sure the phone is turned on and within BT range of my laptop.
A builtin card is a step down, IMO, unless it could be cloned to use the same account as the phone, or unless for some reason I didn't want to have a regular voice handset. (But really, how many no-cellphone luddites are really interested in GPRS data service?)
Perhaps the BT-handset combo is more complicated to set up on Windows than it is on the Mac? The big selling point of these built-in cards seems to be ease of use. Seems like for $29.95 a month I could deal with quite a bit of one-time setup hassles, but that's just me.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I thought one of the advantages of using a pcmcia 3G card is that the antenna is physically sticking out of the laptop, giving both a better signal and reducing the possibly cancer-causing radiation your lap/hands are exposed to. So when 3G is integrated, is the antenna placed for example at the top back of the LCD screen, maximizing the distance between you and the transmissions (and probably eliminating some interference from all the other electronics)? None of the specs seem to mention this...
If its in a bad place, then you're stuck with a 3G device within inches of your hands and family jewels for significant lengths of time... I'd rather a bluetooth phone so I can put it on the seat next to me or something.
Here is the link for 3G laptops with EVDO (faster than GPRS/EDGE): http://www-131.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/P roductDisplay?productId=4611686018425151954&storeI d=10000001&langId=-1&categoryId=2049168&dualCurrId =1000073&catalogId=-840
I didn't originally buy a phone for this type of use, but it's pretty capable. I am on a pay-as-you-go sim with virgin mobile, and they charge 0.5 pence per KB. At first, I didn't worry about that, as I had no real idea how much simple e-mail usage was going to work out costing me. Anyway, one day, I was checking the mail, and the AVG popped up saying it was out of date. Ok, so download it then - except it was a 2.5 MB dload ! I realised after a few seconds what I had just agreed to, and hit the cancel button. Too late, after about 20% of the download, I had run out of credit. I know for a fact that I had £8.00 credit when I logged on for the email ( I was keeping tabs on expected costs/usage ), so that was £8.00 for around 500 KB and some email. *!?# that !
So I am in the market for a better (cheaper) option. It seems that I will have to go contract to get 3G anyway, but I am quite happy with GPRS really. The best prices I have come across (per MB) are from British Telecom (well ok , O2 ) with their unlimited plan running at around £75 (+tax) per month. (Unlimited actually means 1GB BTW) Per meg that's not too bad. They have another plan at 512 MB / month which costs £40 (+tax) which is also not too bad (per MB).
However, trying to find information on how to actually get this service is virtually impossible. For instance, I don't really need a new phone, just a sim card. I don't actually want voice services either, virgins fine for that. I can't use O2s datacard product because I dropped the laptop (while pissed) and broke the pcmcia socket off the mboard - the wifi card was in there at the time !
So, has anybody got any solid info on how to go about getting set up ?
PS. I start a new job in just over a week, and I'm going to need this stuff sorted, or go without /. every morning :<
The new Latitude laptops from Dell (D620 & D420) have 3G as an option. I was evaluating one today and it is a pretty nice Gucci piece of kit. Wireless 54G, Bluetooth, 3G cellular, Ambient light sensor for the screen, beautiful screen and very light. Seems they may have it right folks!!
Everyone who is complaining about price for a data connection in the US needs to look at Sprint. The plan I'm using has an additional $15/month fee for a data connection for my phone. Thats a flat rate for unlimited data usage. I have a Pocket PC 6700 so i use the data connection through the phone all the time. When I need to get some work done i use bluetooth to my laptop and it works great. The PPC has 802.11 in it, but I rarely ever use it because of the speed, ease of use, and lack of limits on use of the data connection. The one thing i wish i could do would be setup the 802.11 as a passthrough to the EVDO network...to do that I have to connect my laptop directly and use it as the gateway for the lan; when i'm connecting this way, i use the USB connection, that way the phone battery is charging instead of draining. The one drawback to this setup is the phone was $400 upfront, but thats just cuz i wanted the phone/PDA combo, which i'm quite happy with. I don't know if sprint offers this service with other phones, but i think they do.
*disclaimier: sprints price on the phone is $450, but verizon has the same phone for $400. Verizons model won't allow for a laptop data connection though, so don't go with them, just tell sprint you'll get their service instead of verizons if they match the price on the phone.
YUP. Wakey wakey Orange UK. Charge less and we will join.
Given my recent woes of getting my Nokia 6682 to actually work as a UTMS/EDGE modem for my Powerbook, the notion of integration is a really nice sounding idea.
I believe that your real problem will come to light when you trade your Just Works(tm) OSX for something evil - simply to get integrated 3G.