{"id":23,"date":"2010-02-05T05:32:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T05:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skeggs.org\/wp\/?p=23"},"modified":"2010-02-05T05:32:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-05T05:32:00","slug":"benq-u121-eco-joybook-and-option-gtm378-playing-nicely-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skeggs.org\/wp\/?p=23","title":{"rendered":"BenQ u121 Eco Joybook and Option GTM378 &#8211; playing nicely now"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So my new netbook is a BenQ u121. It has a lovely 11.6&#8243; screen, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD and great battery life, all in a 1.3kg package. In a step forward for the environment, it also uses the same power supply as my old Acer netbook, so I didn&#8217;t need to buy an extra one (19V 3.42A)! A bargain at $399.<br \/>In Australia, these machines don&#8217;t come with 3G installed, as they do in some markets, but under the sticker that says removing it voids my warranty is a mini PCI-E slot laying empty along with two antenna pigtails. Talk about taunting me.<br \/>The problem is, there is almost no information about making use of it. I followed some tips from a forum around installing a 3G modem on an Acer netbook, and figured I would give it a go.<br \/>A trip to Ebay got me a second hand <a href=\"http:\/\/www.option.com\/en\/support\/knowledge-base\/modules\/\">Option GTM378 3G modem<\/a> &#8211; it does HSDPA at 7.2Mbps on a bunch of network frequencies, including the Voda\/Optus and Telstra ones. $50 and a 7 day airmail trip from Hong Kong and it was mine.<br \/>Plugged it in and XP recognises the device. Pointed it to the drivers downloaded from Option&#8217;s site (version 4.0.17.0)  and &#8230; nothing happens. Installation fails with a message stating appropriate drivers couldn&#8217;t be found.<br \/>Very aggravating. I spent several hours searching and trying different things, to no avail.<br \/>I even emailed Option support, although they publish no contact details and claim to offer no end user support, just OEM. Needless to say, no reply.<br \/>Eventually, I tracked down an older driver &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/download.cnet.com\/1770-20_4-0.html?query=GTConnect+3G+Driver+3+313+zip&amp;tag=404&amp;searchtype=downloads\">version 3.313<\/a> and like magic it works. So, thumbs down to Option&#8217;s support and website for providing the wrong drivers, but a big thumbs up to BenQ for supporting on board 3G!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So my new netbook is a BenQ u121. It has a lovely 11.6&#8243; screen, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD and great battery life, all in a 1.3kg package. In a step forward for the environment, it also uses the same power supply as my old Acer netbook, so I didn&#8217;t need to buy an extra one<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/skeggs.org\/wp\/?p=23\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skeggs.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skeggs.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skeggs.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skeggs.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skeggs.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skeggs.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skeggs.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skeggs.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skeggs.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}