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Do you know of all Chromebooks have cellular modems? It seems like it would be a basic requirement but the article doesn't mention anything.
by criddell 3y ago
Do you know of all Chromebooks have cellular modems? It seems like it would be a basic requirement but the article doesn't mention anything.
- jsnell 3y agoWhy would it be a basic requirement? Cellular modems in laptop are an incredibly niche feature. They're only included in a handful of top-end business laptops and (in my experience) nobody even uses them when present.
- asdajksah2123 3y agoFurther to actually use cellular modems you likely need to pay an additional fee every month to a cellphone carrier. That requirement probably makes the already tiny subset of people who could use a cellular modem even smaller.
- criddell 3y agoThere is a fee, but typically it’s a data-only plan and isn’t super expensive. I’m on T-Mobile and it’s $20 for unlimited data. You can pay even less for limited data.
- umeshunni 3y agowouldn't it be easier / cheaper to just tether?
- criddell 3y agoCheaper, probably. Not easier though. After thinking about it a bit more, Chromebooks biggest users seem to be schools and they don’t want 5G modems for everybody. I would guess they would want some for kids who don’t have decent home internet. It makes sense for the default to be Wi-Fi only.
- antifa 3y agoClicking the wifi hotspot icon and connecting to a wifi network is not only significantly easier than setting up a billing account and paying $100 for a data-only cellular modem plus $20/month for a bare-bones data plan, it's worked flawlessly on at leat the last 4 phones I've owned when it was an android built-in feature.
- lozenge 3y ago$20/month is absolutely expensive if your laptop is hardly ever going to leave your home wi-fi (like most laptops)
- rjh29 3y agoRight! Is there a term for this phenomenon where people think their incredibly niche requirement should be ubiquitous and are astonished that it isn't?
- xp84 3y agoIt’s weird though why it’s so niche, because it’s incredibly useful.
- makeitdouble 3y agoI wonder how many laptops have cellular options right now. From a cursory look they're awfully niche (mostly business BTO models). My best guess would be that the including the cellular chip and paying whoever (Qualcomm ?) holds the licensing fees, doing the qualification etc. is just that prohibitive. PS：Qualcomm's fees based on the total product price sure won't help: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-qualcomm-licensing-idUSKBN1HX08K https://www.reuters.com/article/us-qualcomm-licensing-idUSKB...
- xp84 3y agoQualcomm’s horrible licensing fees are cancerous. It’s the only reason I can imagine why Apple especially doesn’t do this for Macs the way they do for iPads.