Yes, internal mini-PCI wireless cards have extremely weak reception without
antennae built into the system. Open up the little mini-PCI hatch on the bottom
of the chassis and see if there are two wire leads with tiny circular connectors
on them. These connectors are a pain in the ass to attach to a wifi card.
A laptop WITH the antennae and mini-PCI wifi generally has better reception than
the same one with a PCMCIA wifi card. I upgraded an Inspiron 5100 with
internal antenna wire leads and got an ecstatic response from the owner who get
very strong connections to the wifi router in the house... Ben Myers
On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:34:25 -0400, "Christopher Muto" <>
wrote:
>ps. do not confuse mini-pcie cards with the mini-pci type cards that your
>laptop accepts. ebay item number 310065185557 is good example of a mini-pci
>card that is compatible with your laptops mini-pci socket. and that is a
>dell branded card made by intel that is good quality. drivers are avaiable
>from support.dell.com. but, again, make sure you have the internal attenna
>connectors before you purchase a card. i think that all inspiron 600m came
>with the internal attenna installed regardless of weather you puchased the
>internal wireless card or not... but i could be wrong, so check for
>yourself.
>
>"Christopher Muto" <> wrote in message
>news:i4CdnSmC6pKH-...
>>I would suggest getting an internal mini-pci card instead of using a clunky
>>pcmcia card that stick out the side of your machine.
>> look at these directions on how to open the compartment for access to the
>> mini-pci socket... and if you see two small cables in there then you have
>> the bulit in attenna to support an internal wireless card.
>> http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...es.htm#1019173
>> if you have the attenna wires then i would suggest getting this card
>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833345002
>> or getting something like a dell truemobile 2200 that goes for under $20
>> on ebay.
>>
>> <> wrote in message
>> news:7099b79e-d4ea-4e6d-af8b-...
>>> All,
>>>
>>> I have an old Inspiron 600m laptop running XP SP2. I recently bought a
>>> netgear PCMCIA WAG511 card because I've had good experiences with this
>>> product, but when I insert the card into the Dell the system locks up
>>> hard. A power cycle is the only way to bring it back. Since then I
>>> have seen several posts alluding to this, and that Dell has been
>>> unhelpful, but what I want now is some recommendations for a 11g
>>> wireless card that *will* work without issue.
>>>
>>> Of course, if there's a fix out there for the Netgear I'll take it.
>>>
>>> thanks,
>>>
>>> tf
>>
>>
>