netgear wireless card won't fit

your laptop has an express card slot which is incompatible with a pcmcia card.

btw your laptop should have already come with an internal wirelees card.

Bacillus hit the nail on the head as far as ExpressCard vs. CardBus. And of course, as he said, your unit should have come with a built in wireless adapter. If it didn't, you can either (possibly) add an internal wireless adapter by calling Dell support, or otherwise you can use a USB wireless adapter until the WLAN card manufacturers catch up to the rest of the industry and start releasing ExpressCard-based adapters.

FYI, the slots the E1705 has are ExpressCard slots, which are the next-generation replacement for PCMCIA.

Edit: Yep, you should definately have built in wireless. In the E1705 configuration pages, there is no option for a system with no internal wireless card, even in the most basic configuration.

Message Edited by Entropy42 on 07-10-200608:26 AM

lisa345

For whatever the short time period is (10 days?) I understand you are allowed to return a system "for no reason at all" so you might still be able to do so.
The ExpressCard situation has bitten a number of purchasers, you are certainly not the first. I find reading widely on Dell Talk to be very helpful and like to find out as much as I can before making any purchase from Dell. It is useful to me to know what problems others encounter, such as this one.

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@BBraxton wrote:
lisa345

For whatever the short time period is (10 days?) I understand you are allowed to return a system "for no reason at all" so you might still be able to do so.
The ExpressCard situation has bitten a number of purchasers, you are certainly not the first. I find reading widely on Dell Talk to be very helpful and like to find out as much as I can before making any purchase from Dell. It is useful to me to know what problems others encounter, such as this one.

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While that's possible, I wouldn't reccommend it in this situation as it is EXTREMELY difficult to buy a new system with the old CardBus slots instead of ExpressCard.

That and the fact that the card she was trying to install is the equivalent of something included with the system means there isn't really any reason to return it... The Time Warner tech that tried to do the install is a perfect example of the utterly sad state of tech support these days.

Lisa

No current Dell notebooks are shipped with the original  PCMCIA type slot now so, if you return it for that reason, you will have to replace with a non-Dell item.

This read may interest you:

http://www.expresscard.org/web/site/about.jsp

However, I think that you may already have a wireless WLAN MiniPCI Express internal card on that model. Check in:  All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System Information or

Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager>Network Adapters(expand) to see if it is listed.

You can also physically check by opening the compartment:

http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/ins9400/en/sm/cards.htm#wp1009645

If you haven't got a wireless card then you can buy one from Dell and it is easy to fit, to establish your wireless connection to the router/modem. Just be gentle with the antenna:

http://www.dell.com/content/learnmore/learnmore.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&~id=dfamilywireless&~mode=popup&~tab=other

Regards

Barry

N.B. Andy Dodd has posted while I was doing mine. It seems that the E1705 definitely has a card installed so all you need is a new Time Warner technician who knows what he is doing. Suggest that you call them, tell them all you have learnt here and request a new installation.

 

Message Edited by jothemango on 07-11-200604:25 PM