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Netbook's Biggest Secrets Revealed:<br /> HP Mini 1000 does 3G

Someone on the Pocktables.net forum found a way to enable 3G connectivity on the HP Mini 1000 Netbook.

Matt Elliott Senior Editor
Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch.
Expertise Laptops, desktops, all-in-one PCs, streaming devices, streaming platforms
Matt Elliott

The HP Mini 1000 Netbook has a 3G modem--who knew? Well, HP presumably and now the rest of us do, thanks to an enterprising Mini 1000 owner and forum poster at Pocketables.net. He or she (impossible to say with a name like dplxy) discovered a SIM card slot hiding out in the Netbook's battery compartment. After speaking with HP and AT&T, user dplxy was able to find a WWAN driver from HP that did the trick--no hardware required. All that was needed was downloading the driver and then popping a SIM card in the mystery slot, which would seem to indicate that HP is shipping 3G-equipped Netbooks but not telling anyone.

Pocketables.net

Sadly, we just returned our HP Mini 1000 review unit, otherwise we'd be trying this out for ourselves right now (damnable loan agreements!). So, if you are an owner of the HP Mini 1000, take a peak underneath to see if you have this mysterious SIM card slot. Forum poster dplxy outlines the simple process on Pocketables.net and kindly provides a link to the WWAN driver you'll need.

Now, all we need is someone to discover a secret 6-cell battery to replace the puny 3-cell unit that is currently your only option with the Mini 1000.