Netbook not suitable for mobile broadband?

tarajayne

My daughter has been to buy the Acer Netbook today at a Currys store for £179 and they told her it was not suitable for mobile broadband so she came away with nothing. She rents so mobile is the only thing suitable, any recommendations?

Cat695

erm i know 2 guys that have that very laptop that use mobile broadband (both using the 3 one)

and why not get a broadband service in her rented place that is not on a 12 month contract......they are out there


I forgot to add they now have winxp on them NOT linux

shadowdragon

it shouldnt make any difference long as its running the correct Operating system and has usb ports. Theres no reason it should not work unless its down to the fact the netbook comes with linux and "3" dont support linux (anyone comment on that?)

M4RKM

yeah.. the reason i can think of is that the netbook may come with linux, and if there are no linux drivers for the modem, then it won't work..

now, there are plenty of minilappies that run win xp, so you could easily get one..

normally people complain when they buy things from currys, for once we have a whinge that someone was given some reasonably correct advice.... now if i were working there.. i would have sold up to a win xp one...

tarajayne

Think the £179 is the AOA110AW, it is this one they are saying that is not suitable, but they do have the A110AB at £199. We were using the price match with Comet for the first one.

AlexUK_3

I looked into this recently you have to pay about £250 for an XP Acer one. There are ways round the linux thing but probably not worth the risk. Best to get an XP one that will 100% work. Problem then is like me you may as well buy a laptop instead for that money!

tarajayne

normally people complain when they buy things from currys, for once we have a whinge that someone was given some reasonably correct advice.... now if i were working there.. i would have sold up to a win xp one...

Who's whinging, just trying to get some help for my DD.

Grateful to the sales guy for his help just want to get the best for her hard earned money, and she is far too sensible to get 'sold up' by anyone without getting advice first.

Conor_3

Well typically the sales bloke hasn't a clue because it's not Windows so he's stuffed. I have the "3" Huawaei 220 pebble working fine on Linux and there's plenty of "howto" guides on the Ubuntu forums but basically there's a guy who has written a Vodafone application for Linux and it works for the "3" one as long as you put in the network settings.

Marty_J

The Carphone Warehouse give away a netbook when you subscribe to certain mobile broadband packages, so I'd hope they would be compatible.

Fifer

I've been using mobile broadband on Linux netbooks (an Asus Eee 701 and an Asus Eee 901) for the best part of a year with no problems whatsoever.

shadowdragon

Article telling that they have got it working but not really how here :-

http://www.wirelessforums.org/uk-telecom-mobile/3-mobile-broadband-zte-modem-40543.html

theres also some posts about it here too

http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=11593

Personally if your not technically savvy/have little experience of Linux it might be more trouble than its worth (based on I havent used a linux build for years so dont know how much easier they have become)