A Blighty bloke has come up with a novel way of getting his iPad 3G 64 GB working on a British network by taking a cleaver to it. John Benson's shiny new iPad 3G 64GB arrived from the USA but the only problem was that it had an AT&T MicroSIM and there no such thing in the UK.

Writing in his blog Benson somehow hit on the idea of taking a Vodaphone SIM card, a chopping board, a meat cleaver and a pair of scissors and converting it to a "microSIM". He worked out that while the MicroSIM and the SIM look very different the only things that matter are the contacts which are common to both.

"Electronically, the SIM and MicroSIM are the same so we can cut the rest away and not worry (so long as we are careful)," he wrote.

To begin with, line up the three contact on the MicroSIM with the same ones on the SIM card. You can just look for the 2 centre lines and make sure they are in line and that the top of the MicroSIM is straight. Then get your meat cleaver and press down gently to score a straight line.

It is apparently easy, although you do need a responsible adult to help with the scissors.