Advertise

UPDATE: THE NEEDED SCRIPT IS INCLUDED IN MAC OS 9.0.4

PowerBook users have always been a special breed of technophiles. Picky, impatient, and never satisfied with technological mediocrity. They want the best computer hardware running the most elegant OS, and they want access to it at all times. Hence, the PowerBook.

Of course, they also want to remain connected to the outside world even while on the go. But unless you’re fortunate enough to live in an area that offers wireless internet services like Metricom’s Ricochet (which most of us aren’t), you’re pretty much out of luck. And even those services are only offered in a few of the major metropolitan areas of the United States. Let’s say you want to go hiking or camping, and take your PowerBook along to fine-tune that thesis you’ve been writing. Or you might want to use it in conjunction with your GPS receiver. Would be nice if you could still keep in touch with civilization via email should you have the desire, right? Ricochet certainly can’t help you there.

But Nokia and a few other cell-phone suppliers can.

If you’re like me and live in a European country where GSM is the standard for wireless communications, you’re in luck. In their newest generation of GSM phones, including the 8810 and WAP-enabled 7110 , Nokia has included an infrared interface as well as an internal 14.4Kbps modem which you can use to connect to your ISP, anytime and from virtually anywhere. All you need is an IrDa compliant PowerBook (which includes every G3 Series machine), your cell phone and Mac OS 8.5 or better. Oh, and if you’re using one of the newest Nokia phones, a little piece of software I created- the proper modem script.

With Mac OS 9, Apple has supplied us with the Nokia Infrared modem script. But it’s an older script, which was written for an older generation of phones. This was a problem, until now. Download the proper modem script here and drop it on your closed system folder and do the following:

1. Activate the IrDa on your Nokia phone and place it behind your PowerBook, with the two ports as close to each other as possible.
2. Open the infrared control panel on your PowerBook, and make sure the two are connected.
3. Open the Modem control panel and select:

4. Open the Remote Access control panel and dial the ISP as you would through the cell-phone, as opposed to how you would from the landlines (If there’s a difference. In my case there is).
5. Hit "Connect" and you’re done!

Congratulations! You’re online. And you now have wireless (albeit slow) Internet access from anywhere within the GSM network.

Apple has announced that they have been working jointly with Nokia and other cellular phone suppliers recently to bring you even more solutions for wireless connections in the near future. Bluetooth Perhaps? Probably not yet. But we should see the fruits of that labor sometime in the coming months.

In the meantime, on my own computer, with a 7110 the connection speeds are surprisingly fast. A lot snappier than you’d expect out of a 14.4Kbps modem, and certainly ample for email and even light web browsing. Enjoy!