Progress!

[ellarien]

The Eee is endongled! Without my having to download anything extra, or update the BIOS, or guess a password. It might not have worked if I hadn't previously used the PC to establish the thing on the network, but it was very easy.

(Huawei E160; 4G Surf running default Xandros.)

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

How did you manage it? And which network are you on? My Eee does not seem to think that my Orange dongle exists at all, and I have no idea how to convince it otherwise.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Oh! That's good to know. Googling suggested that a dongle would work with the Eee, but it's nice to know that someone I actually know has got it to work.

Do you mind saying which provider you're using? I fancy the Vodafone pay-as-you go option because I wouldn't be using it regularly and they say that you just top up as and when required, but their page doesn't actually give the precise specs of the gadget.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

The other reason for being interested in Vodafone is that the coverage around here is pretty good and much better than O2, which is what the offspring use.

[ellarien]

It's Orange. I plugged it in, went to "Network", asked it to create a connection. It offered "HDSPA modems" (sp?) as an option; I went there and found "Huawei E160X" listed; it scanned for available networks; I told it Orange; it gave me a dialog box for account info, of which I only had to change one bit -- of which unfortunately I can't remember the name, and it won't show me the Properties now -- but the info was in the options for the windows installation, and it wasn't the password, username or "dialup number" and it worked. One of the web pages I went to suggested that the BIOS would need updating first, but that didn't seem to be the case with mine, and I think your Eee is about the same vintage as mine.

[ellarien]

This one's Orange -- Vodaphone doesn't seem to have good service in my mother's area.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I will explore the options further. Vodafone do have particularly good coverage here, but the question is, are they basically the same dongle inside and does the network make any difference regards connectivity via an Eee?

(Those are rhetorical questions, by the way, I'm not expecting an answer! Further research is obviously required, but it's nice to know that the Orange one works.)

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the detailed instructions.

They don't work for me :-(

While it recognises the dongle as a HSDPA model in the file system, it doesn't turn up in the Network list.

I have absolutely utterly no Linux knowledge - I wouldn't know where to start with a BIOS update.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I've found that the coverage finders are pretty accurate - I got my info in various mobile phone shops, but you can probably get the info from the websites.

[ellarien]

Too bad. I suspect it's a slightly different model of dongle? I think the problem may be that they present to the USB as some odd hybrid of modem and storage device, and it sounds as though yours is coming up with the storage side first. Apparently there's something called usbmodeswitch you can install to make that work on some models, but I'm no great Linux expert either and was just relieved that it worked for me without extraordinary measures.

I think the BIOS update comes through the built-in updating system, but it's very much not recommended to try doing it on battery power.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I've never had a problem with Vodafone coverage with my phone and it looks like they are the only company with a pay-as-you-go plan that carries unused credit on indefinitely.

I was looking at another provider's dongle yesterday in a phone shop, but when I asked for details of the payment plan, I discovered that if you didn't use the credit within 30 days, it expired. That's no good for what I want, which is occasional use when I'm away from home.