Internal Installation Of A Bluetooth Dongle?

[trentblase]

I've bought a fairly small and cheap Bluetooth 2 USB dongle, and I'm hoping to find a place internally to mount it.

I know I could have gotten a model with bluetooth built in, but due to the fairly random set of configurations and prices offered, I would have ended up paying over $100 more for the privilage.

I also know that there are many good guides to doing this on other, bigger laptops. My question: have any of you actually opened the X60s up and attempted this? Do you think it would work?

I'm going to open mine up later today, but I was hoping that one of you may have experience or advice.

[pdudas]

If you dont have internal WAN card (not wlan), you have enough space beside the internal Wlan card.
Under the IBM/thinkpad logo on the palmrest there is a space for the internal WAN card. Unfortunatelí my X60 is without the wan card, and on the panel there is not exist even a connector for it.

You have to connect it to the usb port near the firewire port and you cannot use this port unless you install an usb hub to the thinkpad. This is more power hunger than you think.

There is a far better solution. You should buy a 3Com Bluetooth pcmcia card. This card not protrudes out from the PCMCIA, so you have a BUILTIN BT. This card has a dockable antenna.


http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/deta ... =3CRWB6096

Unfortunately this is a discontinued product, but you could buy it from the internet very easy

[trentblase]

Thanks for the info... looks like I'll just have to pop the dongle on whenever I need BT. Not that big of a deal, just a bit ugly (did you see the craptastic "pack-of-cards" moftif on the dongle??). Also, this dongle has a feature:

"The battery saving feature automatically switching the unit off after 10 minutes of inactivity."

I don't know how much I trust this description, but hopefully it works pretty well. If I ever do get the dongle installed internally, I'll post some pics/instructions.

Edit: Oh yeah, when you say "WAN card" are you talking about the gigabit ethernet or something else?

[trentblase]

Ok, so I opened up my x60 and verified that this can be done. The dongle minus case and usb header is TINY. Now I just have to decide whether it's worth the risk/trouble of soldering my new baby. I wouldn't want to use the pcmcia slot because I want to keep it open for more important stuff (perhaps evdo someday).

[domi]

Now I just have to decide whether it's worth the risk/trouble of soldering my new baby.

If you ask me, the "saving" you've achieved ($100 minus the $14 of your USB dongle) was not worth the trouble, not to speak of the risk this could waive your warranty. I would definitely have picked up a unit with built-in BT in the first place.

[trentblase]

$100 for bluetooth is absurd! Uber crazy... also, I may not need to solder... the pins are pretty accessible. But I'll probably just use the dongle as it was intended.

[domi]

Well, one could argue that paying whatever you paid for your X60s is "über crazy" all the same, since you could have gotten a nice El Cheapo Celeron machine for half the price. People who are cheap tend to buy El Cheapo machines, people who buy ThinkPads tend to value quality, and to be ready to pay a premium for the privilege. I personally think it doesn't make sense to quibble about $85 (the price difference in your case between the nice & convenient built-in BT adapter and the clumsy USB dongle you ended up buying) when you just spent 20 times that amount on the X60s itself. I've used a USB BT dongle with my X22, and I've got the built-in adapter on my current X31: for my usage pattern, the convenience of the built-in adapter is definitely worth $85 over my X31's life-span.

[tsammyc]

Try before you solder because from my experience, the range when you do that is quite limited if you have a metal case. The bluetooth option connects to an antenna mounted around the LCD, which is not included if you don't get the bluetooth option. The last time I tried without an antenna on the X40, I got around 1-2 ft from the laptop, which is OK for a cellphone, but not say for a bluetooth GPS.