Using the LG VX8300 to access the internet from your Palm. over the Verizon EDVO network. The LG VX8300 is a fairly nice phone. I have not tried too many, so I can't say it's the best, but it does work well and sounds very clear. This article is simply about using the phone's bluetooth to access the internet from a bluetooth enabled Palm-Pilot. The same information works for a bluetooth enabled PC. This article was written Aug 1, 2006 and may be outdated. It was written about using a Palm TX (built in bluetooth and WI-FI) with an LG VX8300. I'm unable to say how this works with other Palm models. SETTING UP THE ACCOUNT I stumbled across many roadblocks getting mine set up. The first was getting Verizon to add the broadband access to the account. The sales rep did not know that there were 5 phones sold by verizon with the proper combination of bluetooth capability and DUN (dial up networking). Their account managment software also did not know that the LG VX8300 was broadband capable. It took almost an hour just to set up the features. They had to add VCAST (which I don't want) in order to add the broadband for handsets. No idea why. You can confirm that they did it right using the phone itself. You go to menu->tools->my account->my plan and look for BBA CONNECT UNL HNDSET below the "Features" banner. CONFIGURING THE PALM TX The trick to using the palm or PC with the LG VX8300 is to handle the bluetooth properly. I had to learn bluetooth from scratch, so it took 3 days to get everything working. One of the things that confused me was the fact that the palm knows about some cell phones, but not the LG line. As of this point, the Palm TX accesses the LG as a Hayes compatible modem using the universal phone driver. The other stumbling block was the concept that the cell is "discoverable" for only 60 seconds at a time. OVERVIEW The process of setting up the palm and phone is fairly simple. Turn on bluetooth on both devices Pair the devices. Configure the dialup isp on the Palm PAIRING Pairing is simply setting up the devices so they know about each other and agree to talk to each other. The VX has an option under the blue tooth settings that makes the phone visble while you are pairing it (1 minute at a time): menu->tools->bluetooth->settings->discovery mode ->on On the Palm; tap bluetooth symbol->on. Set "discoverable" to "yes" On the phone; menu->tools-> bluetooth->add new device Each device will prompt for a passkey. Most phones accept only numbers. Pick a number and use the same number for both devices. Once it's paired, you can use the Palm prefs-edit-connection to set up the connection as "phone" via "bluetooth" device "LGVX8300" model "Univ Phone Driver" When doing this you may need to set your phone to discovery mode. CONFIGURE THE DIAL-UP ON THE PALM You set up the isp on the palm as follows user: yourcellnum@vzw3g.net password: vzw number: #777 Substitute your 10 digit cell number (including area code) for the word yourcellnum The pound sign is part of the number. Then set up palm prefs-> network ->Service "dial up to isp" with the username, password, etc above. USING THE CONNECTION: When you use the phone as a modem you have to have bluetooth turned on. tools-> bluetooth ->on Now you can tap the blue tooth icon, tap connect and watch it connect to the internet. Once connected the e-mail, web browser etc work properly. The VX8300 has an interesting feature. If there are no packets for several seconds the connection goes "dormant". It restarts within a second or so when you send the next packet. This can be disconcerting at first, but you get used to it quickly. GENERAL NOTES You can not talk on the phone while it's transmitting data but you can while it's dormant. There are hints that only one device at a time can communicate with the phone, so you may have to swap between your headset and your Palm. The same general idea works with PCs and laptops. A windows 98 PC is configured to use it as a "standard 28.8 modem" and gets about 300kbps download. My XP system got 750kbps download. I don't know why. There are documents on PALM's site about bluetooth. http://www.palm.com/us/support/bluetooth/ Most everything I read says you can do the same thing with the VX8100, the Samsung SCHa990, the Motorola e815 and the Razer V3c. The LG 'V' may also allow DUN, but the info at the Verizon store said it did not do DUN so I'm not sure.