I guess the questions are:

1. can the thinkpad tablet use a mobile hotspot..?
i'm guessing yes..

2. the next question is can I use my iPhone 3g as a hotspot..?
another guess is yes with the right iPhone app and maybe a newer iPhone..

3. if yes and yes and the 3g will work, what apps will I need..?

just thinking here..

i can only answer question number 2. u can jailbreak it and install either mywi or my3g. they do hv the feature built in on ios4. but running it on iphone3g abit slow.

jail breaking the iPhone 3G is the only way to get the wifi hotspot thing to work. As Apple iPhone don't support this feature till 4G.

There are a number of posts on various forums which indicate that it does works OK with various mobile hotspot solutions.

Cheers,

Bill B.

3gs still works fine for mobilehotspot feature from the built in IOS 4. imo better use a 3g version for the tablet. saving batteries for the phone also

i got the 3GS and iOS 4, there is only usb or bluetooth option, and no wifi hotspot like the 4G that i got.

my bad it was iphone4. :p so i think only my wi or pdanet

thanks for the replies.. )

well, i ordered the 183827U..
without the 3g option since its not readily available yet..

see above post..

@BillMorrow,

This maybe of some interest to you.

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-sl ... 681/page/2

It depends on how old your iphone 3 is. the later iphone 3gs' can support it, but the original iphone 3gs cannot. if you have the newer 1 then do NOT jailbreak it.

thanks..

how can i learn if my 3g is the old or new version..?

Yes can do both. But be carefull to one thing:
if you set up your iPhone as a modem, and browse the Internet with your thinkpad through your iPhone, your mobile carrier can detect it, and prevent you from browsing. It actually detect your browser "user-agent". For example when you browse with firefox, all your http requests will contain "user-agent=firefox". So if you bought an iPhone data plan with your carrier, it will only accept your http requests if their user-agent is iPhone user agent.
Is it clear?

the iphone uses safari so if i were to use safari on the thinkpad tablet would the carrier (ATT) still detect it is NOT the iphone going online..?

Yes it can detect it, because user-agents will not be the same. They will for example be "Safari vx.x.x winXP" and "Safari vx.x.x iPhone 5.0.1".
At the beginning this is used by web server to present a webpage formated to each type of brother. For example, if facebook web server detect your user agent is an iPhone one, it will redirect you to m.facebook.com, which is mobile version of facebook.

Best way is to buy ATT modem option:
http://www.att.com/esupport/article.jsp ... -mIG9pTkY4

You should also be able to configure your thinkpad safari user-agent, but you will have mobile version of websites... not really cool.

agreed..



the whole idea is to use the unlimited iPhone 3g data rather than pay for an additional per byte data plan that would be the result of upgrading the thinkpad tablet..

Maybe this will work (if you choose to use Firefox): http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/impersonat ... r-firefox/

Yes, they can detect it, but the question is will they care? I have personally tethered my laptop via my AT&T unlimited data plan for dumb phones ($10/mo) on several occasions, making no effort to obfuscate the fact that I'm tethering (by changing UA or anything), and haven't faced any consequences.
My guess is that there's an automated system that flags users who tether without a tether plan and uses a significant amount of data.