56K modem for laptop necessary?

I am ordering a DV 4T laptop. It has the option of a 56K modem. It is cheap, but I never use a dial up connection anymore. Should I still get it? Can I always add a dial up modem with an express card if i need one?

Not sure what to do here.

 

I suggest you don't get it. Cheaper, less hardware and drivers to worry about.

 

you can always get a expresscard to 56k modem if you really want to. Its not really necessary. It can only be used for dial up internet

K-TRON

 

I use a dialup everyday at work. I had to buy a USB modem since the notebook did not have an external modem. Kind of a pain.

 

I would get it so you always have emergency internet. My DSL service was out for about a week, but I still had dial-up to fall back on.

 

dont get it.

 

Wouldn't get it either. Nowadays you can use the mobile phone as a modem for dial up, i guess many upgrade their phones often too so

 

I would personally always advise a notebook user to opt for an internal dial up modem (if the option for one is available at time of purchase). The reason I say this is you never know when you will go somewhere (perhaps some low rent motel etc) and the only connection to the internet is via dial-up. Remember notebooks are mobile devices. So why bother with using an expresscard (which can get lost) when you can just have the modem built in.

 

Waste of $10 its a stupid dead peice of technology.

 

Thats what they said about floppy drives, but oh floppys have their space. They have saved me many times in the past. You need them for flashing bios, and sata drivers.
dialup may have its needs, for $10 its not like the end of the world, getting it or not.

K-TRON

 

I havent used a floppy disc since middle school. ( i dont know why they even used them then) And cant you made USB thumb drives into a floppy drive basically?

 

I haven't had the need to use a floppy disc since 2003 or 2004. There has always been away around to use a CD, DVD, USB or something like that for flashing the motherboard, graphicscard or anything you want. Last time i flashed a video card was via a CD-R i burnt, turned out just fine

Only time i can see that you would need one is if you're still using the good old windows xp from 2001 and is installing it on a raid-volume or something that needs the drivers to be loaded before install!

 

Interesting the last time I used a standard 3.5" floppy disk was just last month when I updated the Bios of a Dell PowerEdge 2900 server. There is no way I am booting a server from a usb flash drive (even if it can it is too risky IMO), if that server went down because of a corrupted bios flash all the virtual machines it runs will be out of commission until the Bios is corrected. So IMO there is still some use for floppy disks in mission critical systems, however for your standard home desktop or notebook it would be fine to just use a bootable usb drive.

And I agree with K-Tron the dial-up modem cost $10 why not get it (I have one on my dv5z) besides for me in the event my DSL goes offline I can still use trusty dial-up (painfully slow ) to get online

 

Well, floppy discettes are sensitive and i've been through alot of times when the data on the floppy disc has been corrupted. So i see that using a USB or CD-R for the sake of flashing seems less fragile. As you can use newer, better and safer tech for it, why not

It just seems that you're used to use a floppy disc to flash a bios and don't know how to flash a bios with CD-R or USB-flash when i read your post It shouldn't matter what you flash, aslong as you can flash with either technology, why not use the safest way to do it




I would personally pay extra $10 for getting rid of 56k modem in my notebook, just because it's one less thing that can get broken and cause any unstability And instead use my phone as a dial up modem via USB.

 

Actually I created a bootable 128mb usb drive that I use just for updating the BIOS on my home computers cause I don't trust flashing a bios from inside windows the risk of a random BSOD is too high for me , however I am not yet totally comfortable using it to flash any server Bios.

 

Yeah i know what you mean with not trusting windows and BSOD. Hehe.

That's why i stated that a CD-R or a USB-flashdrive should be even safer to flash from than a floppydisc in the exact same way as you use a floppydisc to update BIOS via "dos-mode"

In my eyes floppydiscs are way more sensitive against corruption as the datalayer can be exposed easily.

 

+1

I can't imagine surfing the internet at 56kbps...

 

Besides serving as a backup in seedy hotels, it can also be used for sending faxes, if this is important to you.

 

Buy it.

It's far better to spend $10 now and never need it, than to find yourself needing it and not have it. I got it on my ThinkPad x200 (although oddly enough the upgrade price was $0) and used it when I lost power after Hurrican Ike (no DSL, ethernet, wi-fi, etc., but I still had my phone and Dial-Up).

That being said, I wouldn't rule out buying an otherwise good notebook that didn't have a modem.

 

BUY IT.

When you go to sell it in a couple years it will probably be bought by someone on a budget. That person may not be able to afford cable. They won't consider your computer without a built in modem.