I worked at Radio Shack while an undergrad; you have no fucking idea how backwards that place is.

As someone who has bought batteries, I have to tell you that it's pretty obvious even to the customers.

scoff at The Shack all you want, they remain a profitable company year after year

Yeah, it's probably the TRS-80 model 100, which is in many ways the first "netbook" (it could even get online - it had a modem!). Hence the tag.

....of the 90's.

Sorry. Just channeling a bit of Ray Bradbury's "The Murderer" there.

That's nothing. In the 60s, mobile phones required a whole room full of relays, reel-to-reel, and blinking red lights. You needed a government grant to buy one and three secretaries working 24/7 to operate it.

It was truly a great time for impressing people with your phone.

So would every other hipster.

You could get it to work I'm sure. If those old modems made of wood can still load wikipedia fairly fast then one of these fatman phones can too.

You might have to build your own analog cell phone towers

I bet you could scrape a base station together using a USRP and terminate the calls over the internet. The FCC might show up with baseball bats though.