Slightly OT: Merlin GPRS PC card

[cellhead]

I have a Pocket PC Phone (yes, the crooks at a1wireless finally found & delivered the damn thing, but so far have stiffed me on the promised $15 credit).

I also bought off eBay a Merlin G100 GPRS card so I could use my laptop over GPRS for some serious road trips where the PPC wasn't going to cut it.

Card is supposed to be new, an OEM version discontinued by TMobile but still supported.

I put the Tmob sim in the card, installed the T-Mobile internet manager software on the laptop (Dell running WinXP), inserted the card, then the installer complained that the driver was not signed for XP, I continue anyway, device manager says could not start device, error 10. Internet manager sees the card but can't talk to it.

There is also a built-in modem in the laptop, but I disabled it in case the problem was a conflict. no joy. Also if I leave the Merlin card in and power up the laptop, the laptop locks up solid. Boots up fine if I unplug the card. Weird.

Any ideas? Did I get a bad card? Or is there a trick to this

[yvilla]

Can't be sure this will help you, but when I was first setting up my CF GPRS card to work with T-Mobile on my Tablet, I learned that T-Mobile's internet manager software is worse than useless! My advice is to uninstall it. Then making sure you know the correct dialing string, etc., just set up your T-Mobile connection manually with XP's built in connection manager. That is the only way I could get my card to work. Once you set it up, it should be smooth sailing thereafter.