Thinkpads Forum

Last year when opened up the lid of my T60 to swap in an UXGA panel, I also bought a WWAN antenna from eBay and fitted that in the lid as well. Just in case I should ever need to run 3G on any of my machines.

Now I am in the middle of doing a fan swap and a CPU/RAM upgrade, so I went ahead and ordered the SIM card reader and the keyboard bezel antenna as well. There were two different antennas listed, one regular and one Vodafone. I took a chance and went with the Vodafone one. (Part# 91P7029) When I received it, it turned out that this was a kit, consisting of both the keyboard bezel antenna and the lid antenna. But the the lid antenna is different from the one I have. This one is just a metal plate attached to the back of a blanking cover, (The cover I removed to fit the antenna) and it's apparently meant to be all inside the lid and totally hidden.

Does anyone know the difference between these two lid antennas? Is this a result of me buying the Vodafone type antenna?

Since 3G apparently uses different frequencies around the world, it struck me that they might be different because they are meant to receive and transmit different frequencies. I hope I did the right choice with the Vodafone type since I live in Europe.

To add more confusion, the keyboard bezel antenna (Or what I *thought* was the keyboard bezel antenna) didn't fit in the slot underneath the keyboard bezel. It was way too big. Judging from the length of the cable and the fact that it had a rubber grommet on it, indicates that it is supposed to go in the lid. So both antennas I got seems to be meant to go in the lid. The part number on the box is the correct one for T60 15" models, but I start to suspect that the antennas inside the box is for a different and perhaps newer Thinkpad model. Do any of you know how the WWAN antenna kit for a, let's say T400/500 or a T410/510, looks like? Do both antennas go in the lid?

Anyway, by modifying it slightly, I managed to get it in place underneath the keyboard bezel. I also shortened the cable. I am not sure if this mod will make the antenna work like it's supposed to, but I can chose to only use the existing antenna in the lid. And it really doesn't matter, as I don't expect to need WWAN in the near future.