Why Wi-Fi Chromebooks Do Not Work with 3G Dongles

It is a common scenario, you buy a Wi-Fi-only Chromebook and want to use it on a 3G network so you dig out an old 3G/4G USB dongle, stick it into one of the USB ports and press Ctrl+Alt+T to launch the crosh command-line interface. You then type modem activate and the machine answers no modem found. You know it’s there, so what’s the deal? Well…

If you want to save money on a Chromebook and buy Chromebook Wi-Fi version instead of a Chromebook 3G, because you have a 3G/4G dongle, then don’t do that. Chromebooks run a stripped-down version of the Linux kernel with no support for usb-modeswitch. Without it, you cannot make a USB 3G/4G dongle work with a Chromebook Wi-Fi. But Mi-Fi or tethering will work just fine.

 

My Chromebook Beats Your MacBooks

This is not a dig at Apple. OK, maybe a little. There is this projector we use for internal presentations. It is supposed to accept HDMI output. Every time we do presentations our guys try to connect their MacBooks to the projector using those fancy DisplayPort-to-HDMI cables and sooner or later the projector goes out of sync and kills the presentation. Today was no exception.

Fortunately, I had my brand new, 7 hour-old Chromebook with me. It has an HDMI port, so I simply plugged it into the projector, connected to the network, pulled slides from Google Slides and it worked. Simply worked.

Now, when was the last time I’ve heard that phrase before?