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Why 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 a
by jsnell 3y ago
Why 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.