Convert a SIM To a MicroSIM, With a Meat Cleaver 302
An anonymous reader writes "This morning, my shiny new iPad 3G 64GB arrived from the USA! The only problem was, it had an AT&T MicroSIM and as yet there is no such thing in the UK. So what's the solution? Get a chopping board, a meat cleaver, and a pair of scissors — simples!"
Agh, don't cleave with a vegetable knife! (Score:4, Informative)
You'll ruin your mighty-fine blade [amazon.com]. Rock it on the cutting board, dice up a big 'ol pile of veggies. This is a cleaver [wikipedia.org].
Boy, Slashdot needs <WP:Cleaver>-style tags.
That's not a meat cleaver! (Score:5, Informative)
*Twitch* *Twitch*
I have to do it. My parents own a kitchen store.
THAT'S NOT A MEAT CLEAVER!
It's most likely an 8" chef's knife. However, a meat cleaver would be better since the front and back edges are closer to parallel, where as the chef's knife is tapered to a point. The parallel edges would give a more precise cut when hammering on the back edge.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31ETG99JSQL._SL500_AA280_.jpg [images-amazon.com]
*sigh*
Re:That's not a meat clever (Score:2, Informative)
Oops, LoudMusic already pointed that out. Sorry.
In the interests of whoosh... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:From Office of Making Things Unnecessarily Smal (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Good news everyone! (Score:3, Informative)
This guy imported a product that's not officially launched anywhere except the USA. So of course there has to be some hacking required. This is like people installing modchips in their consoles and DVD players to bypass countries/regions restrictions.
Re:From Office of Making Things Unnecessarily Smal (Score:3, Informative)
The actual reason was that back then sim cards (and mobile accounts) were expensive as hell. Namely you (as rich dude) were more likely to have multiple phones than multiple sim cards.
As such, a credit-card sized SIM made sense. It's sized to fit in your wallet with the rest of your cards. You would keep it in your wallet and when needed, whip it out and insert into "phone" of choice.
Back in the 80's/early 90's I remember coming across car stereos wondering why they had credit card slots, then I found out they were for sim cards. You slit the card in there, and the radio became a handsfree mobile phone. You didn't have hands free kits, bluetooth or any kind of connectivity back then short of the actual GSM radio. You actually had a separate physical phone for multiple places and events, so it made sense to have a hard to lose, easy to store and insert/remove SIM card.
Imagine having to switch between the phone in your car, your "mobile" on your person, the phone in the jet, the office phone etc... with all the fumbling around with current SIM cards. Logically, when requirements as above were no longer necessary and people had one headset with wired and wireless accessories attached, the SIM was made smaller as people were less likely to need to insert/remove it 10 times a day.
Re:That's certainly... (Score:2, Informative)
Except that the page footer says "Made on a Mac" with an Apple logo. "Sent from my iPhone." "Sent from my iPod." Who cares? Their products insert advertising. I hate Apple for that crap.
What's with all the mod-points spent on this topic? Did Apple invent the default email signature or something? If I bitch about Yahoo or Hotmail can I earn karma?
A better write-up, with dimensions and adapter (Score:3, Informative)
The linked article was mediocre. We all know how to cut things with scissors and knives, what we need are the measurements. Here is a better writeup, with the micro SIM dimensions [touchuserguide.com]. It also links to the micro SIM shop, where you can buy adapters to convert the micro SIM back to a mini SIM.
Re:No, seriously (Score:1, Informative)
"Dangerous" is overstating it a bit. SIMs cost a couple of pence, and Vodafone would surely send him another one for a minimal fee (or for free) if he messed up.
Re:That's certainly... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No, seriously (Score:3, Informative)
> He made the mistake of presuming that the circuitry inside would
> be no bigger than the effective external contact area.
Not really a presumption considering that some operators actually mark the micro-SIM cutting lines for you:
http://aaisp.net.uk/i/sim.png [aaisp.net.uk]