Acoustic Coupler | Macs on the Go

Imagine you're driving through a small town in NowhereSpecial. Your mobile phone's service provider is out of range. It's Sunday and nothing is open. You really need to go online so you can send an important message. My oh my, is that a payphone over there? Why not use an acoustic coupler and connect your laptop to the payphone. OK, this is pretty extreme, but someone out there might need it.

An acoustic coupler lets you connect your laptop (if it has a modem) to virtually any telephone even payphones or hard-wired phones that don't use an RJ-11 cable. An acoustic coupler attaches to the handset of a phone using a Velcro strap. The coupler's RJ-11 cord plugs into the RJ-11 port (the modem port) on your laptop.

When your laptop dials your ISP's number, the modem beep sounds are transferred to the phone handset. This may not work every time, especially on older payphones, but at least it provides a possible connection option, even if you're in another country with a hard-wired phone in your hotel room.

To find an acoustic coupler, go to any of the popular online shopping sites, such as Froogle.com or PriceGrabber.com and search for "acoustic coupler."

To use an acoustic coupler:

1.	Open Internet Connect. Enter settings to dial your ISP, as explained in Chapter 3. When you enter the ISP phone number, you can avoid having to add coins to a payphone by adding a calling card number in front of the ISP number. Or use an 800 number service, such as the one provided by EarthLink and many other ISPs.
2.	Connect the coupler's RJ-11 cord to the modem port on your laptop.
3.	Strap the acoustic coupler to the phone's handset, matching the speaker to the phone's mouthpiece and the microphone to the phone's earpiece.
4.	Click the "Connect" button in Internet Connect. If you have trouble connecting, try dialing manually. From Internet Connect's "Connect" menu, choose "Manual Dial," then use the phone to dial your ISP number.

Make sure your Internal Modem is turned on in Network preferences; see pages 2628.

Remember, the new MacBook Pro laptops don't have internal modems or RJ-11 ports. If you have one of these laptops, you'll need to buy an external modem. Apple sells a small USB modem that's perfect for travel. Go straight to Apple.com, or go to Apple.com and click the "Store" tab.