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.

Comments

Dell announce four new laptops including 3G ready

[Anonymous Coward]

March 2006 -- http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news.php?newsId=2939

3G - Does this mean it would work

[rolfwind]

in both America and Europe with the proper SIM card?

Nokia 6682 isn't a 3G phone.

[Valdrax]

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.

SIM slot in the battery compartment?

[merdaccia]

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.

Does it run Linux?

[Kadin2048]

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.

Been using an Aircard for a while now

[Martin Foster]

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!

Not sure if I'd want it

[dada21]

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?

Re:I take a dim view of this.

[pimpimpim]

Shouldn't they have used the same chipsets as the 3G pcmcia cards one can get? (I really wouldn't know, but it sounds a reasonable thing to do). If so, you can probably get it working in linux.

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.

Depends

[gregarican]

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!

Re:Depends

[MrPerfekt]

*shrug* I pay $19.99 for unlimited data transfer... seems like a bargain to me.

I did have to learn the hard way though that the US and Europe's UMTS frequencies are different. Which really kind of upset me since the Sony Ericsson V802SE is an overseas phone so of course it operates on 2100mhz. The band issue is because 2100mhz isn't available in all areas, so they had to go with 1900mhz. Go FCC!

Anyway, be careful when shopping for a UMTS phone as most of them will be for 2100mhz. To my knowledge, at the current moment there are only 2 1900mhz UMTS phones out which are the branded ones at Cingular. I just got the LG U340, works pretty well as a phone and fantastic as a modem. With my MacBook using bluetooth to connect to the Internet through UMTS, I get speeds of 35-40KBps and it bursts up to 45-48KBps. Not too bad for coming from GPRS which tops out for me at about 6KBps.

There are dual band UMTS phones planned... one of them is the Nokia N80. Looks like a sweet phone but me needing instant gratification, just went with what was available. So if you want a true "world phone", you'll have to wait for one of those.

not neccesarily

[spectrokid]

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....

Re:not neccesarily

[TheRaven64]

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....

Did you know there's a Bluetooth profile for dial-up networking? Just keep the radio hardware in the 'phone and transmit the data via BT. That way you can replace your 'phone and keep your laptop when you upgrade to 4G, or whatever the next mobile buzzword happens to be.

Duplicating SIM cards

[Kadin2048]

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.