Switching a mini 9 from AT&T to Sprint

BombrMan · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 01 Dec 2008 Posts: 13

I just ordered a Dell Mini 9 yesterday, and they only offer the AT&T mobile broadband. I'd much prefer to be on sprint. After looking into it a bit, I think the card from the u720 will just plug into the mini 9 WWAN slot and connect to the antenna. The thing is, AT&T is GSM as I understand it, so will the antenna in the laptop lid be the wrong wavelength to work with EVDO? Are there any other forseeable problems with doing this? The laptop comes with XP but I plan to switch to Vista with vLite. Is the u720 card ok with Vista?

Jim_in_VA · Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 6:14 am Post subject:

The U720 has its own on-board antenna and will not use the laptops. You won't have any problem whatsoever as long as there is a USB port to plug into. It will work with Vista.
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BombrMan · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 01 Dec 2008 Posts: 13

I was under the impression that if you take apart the u720 there is a card inside which can plug into the laptop's internal slot and connect to the laptop's integrated antenna. That's what I was asking about. I'm glad that it will work for vista though, that's one problem solved.

Jim_in_VA · Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 6:52 am Post subject:

ah, ok gotcha. Sorry I'm not familiar with that mod. GSM operates on both bands in the USA. You likely have a dual-band antenna in the Mini9 so that's not a problem. Check the specs.
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Alex · Posted: Mon Dec 01, 2008 8:29 am Post subject:

Jim, he is talking about pulling out an internal/embedded module and replacing with module that is inside a U720.

It should work... only challenge is if you can get Sprint connection manager to recognize/work with it. that will be fun.

i answered your antenna question on your other post.

do post back here after you have attempted?
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BombrMan · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 01 Dec 2008 Posts: 13

The laptop isn't coming till the 16th but I will post back results once I have it. Hopefully it works because I really don't want AT&T.

BombrMan · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 01 Dec 2008 Posts: 13

Got the laptop finally, The u720 from 3gstore came apart no problem. I took out the AT&T card from the laptop and replaced it with the one from the u720. Snapped the antenna connectors from the laptop on and installed the sprint connection manager, and I am posting this on sprint EVDO on my Dell Mini 9. I'm still messing with the laptop but we just drove to Santa Cruz with it listening to streaming music no problem the whole way.

SlyFerret · EVDO Heavy User Joined: 19 Mar 2007 Posts: 126

I think you'll really like your Mini-9 when it arrives.

My brother is in Europe right now. Last summer, he was running a youth hostel in Portugal. Now, he's a teaching assistant in France. His entire world fits into his backpack, and he needed a tiny laptop.

It didn't arrive in time for him to leave, so I had the pleasure of carrying around for a week before packing it up and sending it to him overseas.

I was very impressed with it. There were of course a couple concessions that they had to make with the keyboard on a system that small, but overall it was a very usable little machine.

If you ordered yours with XP, I suggest turning off drive compression on the C: drive (this makes a noticeable difference in performance) and then store your data on a USB flashdrive or SD card.

It's certainly not a desktop replacement, but for a machine that is not much bigger than a paperback book, it does pretty well. The screen on it looks fantastic.

-SF

srievley · Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 7:08 pm Post subject:

BombrMan · EVDO Fledgling Joined: 01 Dec 2008 Posts: 13

I have been trying but I haven't got it to aquire a sat yet. I don't really know why and I haven't looked into it, but it can never find sats, even when my Helio and my AVIC have no trouble. It seems to be detecting the gps part of the card in the sprint manager, but it just can't find a sat. I wonder if it's because it's inside the case.