Feb 27

Mac Nerd Tip #4 – Macbook Pro + Treo = Internet Anywhere

Mac Nerdom No Comments »

I know I know, if you want to be really cool these days you need to be sporting an iPhone, not a dying device created by a dying manufacturer lacking in innovation. But if you’re like me, you might be lucky enough to have Sprint send you a free Palm Treo 755p to keep you as customer–something I can hardly complain about.

I’ve been using Palm devices for years now, this being my fourth device (Palm Pilot, Samsung i330, Treo 650, 755p) and feel quite at home on the interface. So for the time being I’m quite happy with my Treo.

Using DUN (dial-up-networking) to access the internet through your Treo has been around for quite some time for Palm with much thanks to folks like Shadowmite, so I’m not discussing any all to new. What I would like to show though is the easiest and most reliable method for getting your macbook online by “tethering” to your Treo. There are ways to do this using Bluetooth, like I said, you will have mixed results. Connecting through USB really is the best bet.

What you’ll need:

  • Any Mac with a usb port running OSX.4 or higher.
  • USBmodem – $24.95 (which also works with Windows and Linux)
  • For High Speed access a Sprint or Verizon Treo 700p, 755p, or Sprint Centro (sure this will work with GSM providers, but who wants slow EDGE access, oh yeah iPhone Owners)
  • the usb sync cable that came with your device
  • A Sprint or Verizon Tethering plan at $50+/m (although there are detailed ways around needing this, I will not describe such things here)
  • If you don’t already have MissingSync for Palm, I highly recommend it over Palm’s hotsync utility, simply because hotsync blows. But you can do this without MissingSync.

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