If you buy a notebook that is available with integrated wireless but don't get it how hard is it to add later?

[thedarkwolf]

I am looking at lowend notebooks for my sister and want one that supports a/b/g wireless networking but sofar I can only find ones that support b/g. I assume that if the notebook is available with integrated wireless it has all the stuff in it and I can just install a mini-pci card. Is that right? How hard is it to install one, never worked on a notebook before, and where do you buy them? I did a little playing around on the net lastnight and the only place I saw that sold mini-pci cards was on e-bay. Is this something you have to buy from the notebook manufactures like Dell and HP?

I read in another thread on here that the IBM notebooks will only work with IBM mini-pci cards. Any other gotchas like that I need to be aware of before doing this?

 

[jschuk]

The mini-PCI slots are usually easily accessible. The only exception to the rule that I can think of is when dealing with ultra-light laptops. Just make sure that if it doesn't come with the card installed, that the laptop is labeled as wireless ready. That will indicate that the antennas are in place. I put a non-IBM wi-fi card into an IBM. It would recognize the card and even show signal strength, but it would always that the network cable was unplugged. Some Toshiba's are like that too where they will recognize an unsupported card, but will not connect to the access point or show the cable is unplugged. A BIOS update solved the issue for one Toshiba model.

 

[sciencewhiz]

Why not just use a pcmcia card?

 

[thedarkwolf]

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz
Why not just use a pcmcia card?

Well I'd rather have it free for other things. Plus I have heard they don't have as good of range.

 

[drag]

Go check out a IBook. 12" 800mhz G4 (about 1.1-1.3 ghz pentium4power terms)

1099 bucks base model comes with a nice 9200 ati vid card(better then Intel graphics you'll find elsewere on low end laptops) 256 megs of RAM. Standard DVD player/CD-R burner, video out (tv composite/s-video and VGA, all with a adapter).

Upgrade that to 680 megs of ram, add a airport card(wireless), A extra 300-400 bucks or so I think. Check out www.apple.com for there online store.

They have decent battery life (3-4 hours realisticly) are light, quiet, and cool running.

Also get educational and other discount pricing if you want. They have a cheap educational-setup-only one that is the regular 12" Ibook, minus the combo drive. $950 with my discount.

If your not sure see if there is a apple reseller around your area, try a couple of those laptops out. Apple stuff has a much longer usefull lifespan. At a school I worked at they had ancient 400-500mhz powermacs that ran photoshop and OS X and a bunch of other graphical software. The differences between then and the newest machines were negligable to the student's point of view.

OTHERWISE

If apples don't float your boat, then go online and check out Dell and Gateway's stuff. They have cheap stuff and you can have them upgrade the wireless stuff for you.

The lowend thinkpad is 1054 dollars, a mini-PCI card is 70 bucks extra.

Also be sure to upgrade your memory to at least 516megs. That will extend the usefullness life-span considerably.

 

[Molloch]

Sorry, just a silly question. Isn't a 1.1-1.3GHz Pentium4 REALLY REALLY slow? Don't you mean to compare it to a P3/PM at those speeds (since the P4 had to get upwards of 2GHz before it was able to compete with and beat a ~1GHz P3)?