The desire to be connected to the internet anytime … anywhere …

It only takes a trip to a destination that doesn’t have free wi-fi (when you thought it would) to make you cringe.  My cute ‘lil Acer Aspire One netbook has wonderful boot-up time, is incredibly portable, and has decent battery life.  The problem is entering an establishment like Starbucks for example and you have to frown at the need to pay P100 for an hour connect time.  In this day and age, signal should be free!  Oh well, that’s me.  And, really, you have to blame all those bandwidth hoggers (and hackers) out there who are probably the reason for all these inconveniences.

Yes, yes, you say, use your smartphone.  That’s what the data plan is for anyway.  For quick searches, I really don’t mind; but, when I am sitting having my coffee, it’s great to be able to pull up your email and possibly shoot out a couple of reports while enjoying your favorite java.

So, I went searching and actually learned that there was an Acer Aspire One model with 3G!  But, of course, it wasn’t sold here. grrrrr….

More searching led me to TnkGrl‘s blog site, specifically, her HSDPA mod post.  She’s amazing!  Here’s a pic:

I’m not sure if I am ready to go into all the soldering required, though, and if I were, the parts just aren’t available here in the Philippines.  Maybe sometime in the future, though.  I’d love to slap a sim card in there and be connected!