3G Notebook In Review 70
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.
3G - Does this mean it would work (Score:4, Interesting)
Does it run Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:I take a dim view of this. (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
Duplicating SIM cards (Score:5, Interesting)
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.