SPONSORED LINKS
Here are some experiences getting the Thinkpad Cellular capable... I very recently purchased on of the new IBM Thinkpad 560's (120mhz), with a Motorola Montana 28.8 modem (cellular ready) and 10baseT net card. As I was trying to get totally self-sufficient, I went out and bought a Motorola MicroTAC Elite cell phone. After I got both, I discovered that I had to buy another cable to hook the "cellular ready" modem to the "modem ready" cell phone. No one at any local store had any clue what I needed to hook the two up. They tried to sell me a "box"-like thing to do it. Finally I go the number of Motorola direct PCCard sales and ordered the required cable $60, overnight. Overnight, turned into being two-day air. At the end of the second day, I called back and asked where the cable was, they had no idea. They have recently gone to an automated fulfillment system, and it was having "difficulty". They could not tell me if it even shipped, much less give me a tracking number. They suggested I order another one Fed-x priority overnight to ensure that I got it before my out-of-town trip. They promised to hand deliver it to the warehouse, hand-pick it from inventory, and put it in overnight guaranteed. I let them do this and got it the next morning. The next morning, a few hours before my plane left, I wanted to try everything out. I opened the cable, installed the software, then discovered that the PC Card that I bought the week before had a serial number which was 100,000's less than that required to operate correctly. What the instructions told me to do was fax in a new order for an exchange. The problem, I was told, was one of FCC compliance, and that it would still work-provided I did three things: Loaded the new software included with the cable, downloaded a newer patch from their site, and followed a complicated and lengthy and manual installation-correction sheet. After doing all three, I was unable to get anything working. I then proceeded to spend the next 3 hours on the phone with Motorola, then vendor where I purchased the Thinkpad, IBM, and Microsoft. Motorola eventually got the modem working again, but during the process I lost the ability of the card to communicate on the network. Motorola was totally unable to get this problem resolved. IBM wanted about $120 to fix it. Only Microsoft (for $35) was able to solve this problem. Now, after the fact, I have also learned that I can only get speeds up to 9600 baud, and I have to have separate modem settings for land-lines and cellular connections. I don't know if I would try this again. Why is everything so complicated? FYI