TechBlog from Sewell

Our part Sw-4772 is a hot buy lately due to laptops that have upgraded to the new Express Card slot when wireless companies are still using the old PCMCIA for their modem cards. When buying this product pay close attention to the compatibility list on the right- if your card isn’t there, it isn’t supported. But there is good news! There are other ways to accomplish wireless connectivity through your cellular service.

One option is to use your phone;

If you have a GSM phone (such as Cingular or T-mobile) you want to make sure the phone at least has EDGE, at best their broadband network. With CDMA phones (such as Verizon or Sprint) you want to have EVDO, or better yet EVDO RevA which should be coming out soon on some high end phones. Then you pay for phone as modem service through your provider (usually cheaper than modem card service plans) and hook your laptop up to it through either bluetooth or USB and you’ll get basically the same speeds as your modem card was, plus it will be conveniently packaged in your existing phone. You might consider buying a spare battery. I use my Samsung A900 with Sprint and it works great.

Another option, switch cards;

If you recently bought your card, most service providers allow for a 14 day or 30 day risk free trial period. Many carriers now carry express cards, but you may need to talk to someone who really knows what they’re talking about to find out how to get one. My experience with their customer service is they don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve heard Cingular has them but I can’t find them on their website, and Sprint had an ETA of Dec 6 according to someone I talked with on the phone, but I have yet to see them as of Dec 22(they do have a USB modem however). Verizon has one called the V640 I found on their website. Even if you can’t return your old card, often buying one of the new ones is your better option anyway.

If you have a SIM Card in your phone(only GSM phones like cingular and t-mobile) you can get a USB modem for your sim card;

see our part Sw-5855
just put your sim card in this, make sure you’ve subscibed to phone as modem on the account whose SIM card your using, and you’re good to go with EDGE speeds where available .
I hope this helps you.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 at 12:27 pm and is filed under ExpressCard, PCMCIA, USB. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.