Thinkpads Forum

GrandMasterKhan's comments are valid and fair. Nobody should open up their thinkpad without understanding the risk.

That being said, I'm glad i did it.

a) I am on planes/airports all the time and while attaching and keeping track of a dongle sounds trivial, it quickly turns into a pain in the rear, so bad that I was willing to do this

b) through the wonders of the internet and people providing their knowledge and lessons learned, I felt I could do it and the risk was manageable.

However I did go into it understanding there was a chance I'd brick my laptop. But having had a laptop stolen and another one shattered by falling off a table, I figured I'm always at risk of screwing up my laptop anyway and I wanted to convenience.

I LOVE the no-dongle connection!

I did more research and found MC8781 (Aircard 881U is a upgrade)

I would understand it is a HSDPA and can do 7.2MPS (3.5G), and also with a sensitive GPS.
After comparing with Ericsson F3507g and also Gobi2000, which can cost 3X more. It seems MC8781 mainly difference to these 2 other newer card are slower uplink speed, and downlink is no worser.

Thus, it makes a lot of sense to get MC8781, from a performance/value perspective. (older MC8775/mc5725 cost about the same, slower downlink).

Anyone has some understand, can confirm my thoughs?

Thanks