Netbook Experience

Mobile Internet is becoming ever more popular now that all the major mobile phone providers are offering good value deals on 3G Dongles and data packages.
USB 3G Dongles allow connection to the Internet over the Public Mobile Phone Networks at reasonable speeds, whilst the speed won’t compare to your home broadband – it’s certainly fast enough for Web browser access and email, and the Mobile Internet and Netbooks go hand in hand.

It’s quite straight forward to install a Mobile Internet 3G Dongle on the Linux version of the Acer Aspire One, I installed a 3G Dongle (Huawei E156G)  from ‘3 uk‘ without any problem.

The procedure I followed is listed below.  (click on the pictures to enlarge).

1) First check that you have the green Mobile Partner icon in your ‘Connect’ section, it was missing on mine (shown below).

2) If the Mobile Partner icon is missing the do a Live Update from the ‘Settings’ section. This will install the necessary files to support your 3G Dongle.

3) After the install has finished perform a system re-start and when the computer has rebooted, you will have the Mobile Partner icon displayed in the Connect section.

4) Put your dongle in to the Computer and it will open as a disk in Explorer. Navigate to the Disk1 folder and click on setup.inx

5) Launch the Mobile Partners application and go to the options section.

This is where you configure the application for your Network:

Enter a suitible Profile name (eg 3 Network)

For the 3 Network:

• In the Profile Management section change the APN to Static
• Enter a APN of 3Internet.

Click on Ok

6) Click on Connect.

This will now connect you to the Mobile Broadband Network, and you will be able to use the Internet as Normal.

Please be aware that some Mobile Internet providers may charge you a signifcan rate of use if you exceed your data allowance.

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