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PC911 > How-To > Miscellaneous > The Wireless Roadwarrior Experience

- Alex "crazygerman" Byron -

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The Wireless Roadwarrior Experience

Summary: This mutt of an article, written in March 2003, is about my experience with setting up a Sony Ericsson T68i GSM cell phone to work with a Windows XP laptop wireless via a D-Link DNT-120 Bluetooth USB adapter to transfer data between the two as well as connect to the Internet, configuring the phone with a Jabra Freespeak BT200 Bluetooth wireless headset, customizing the T68i with pictures, themes, and ringtones, finding the best software to work with the phone, and more. It contains everything from how-to instructions over mini product reviews to software recommendations, tips and tweaks, and my own subjective comments.

Contents

The Beginning: Introduction

As I write this article, I am sitting in a train on my way to work in San Francisco, pecking away at the keyboard of my laptop. The fact that I am spending almost two hours every day on this train commuting is what inspired this entire project to begin with. In contrast to many of my fellow commuters, I did not feel like sitting limp in my seat, napping, reading a schlocky romance novel, staring out the window, or falling into a catatonic state of barely being. My goal was spend the time more productively by writing, working on this website, reading, staying in touch with people, etc.

I already had this Pentium II 400 MHz laptop, old and not exactly a speed demon, but perfectly fine for writing and the likes. I upgraded the RAM to 256MB, replaced the tiny hard drive with a 12GB one I got cheap on ebay, added a second battery (again, cheap from ebay) for 4-5 hours of operating time, and installed Windows XP Pro and Office XP.

That took care of the computer. Now it was time for connectivity. I would not accept the fact that I had to sit on a train for an hour with no phone, email, chat, or web. We're in the age of wireless, there had to be options. I made a trip to my cell phone provider (AT&T Wireless) who has a store in the neighborhood to find out what was available to get connectivity while on the train.

I first was leaning towards a Sierra 710 wireless PCMCIA modem, but I was not in the mood to spend several hundred dollars on a modem alone. After doing some research, I decided to upgrade my cell phone instead to a Sony Ericsson T68i because it gave me the connectivity options I was looking for, a significant cell phone upgrade, and saved me money compared to the PCMCIA modem option.

   
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