Is Your Laptop Or Home Computer Wireless Enabled?Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 or Go To our Certification Articles Section
Built in wireless capabilities are becoming almost standard
equipment on most laptop and home computers these days for
a couple of reasons. One of the primary reasons is cost. Adding
wireless capacity is so inexpensive that it would be silly
for the manufacturers not to add it. The perceived value of
any machine with wireless capacity far exceeds the cost to
add it. Wireless is the wave of the future, so if the manufacturers
want to stay ahead of the technology curve they need to add
it to all but there most basic models.
However, if you're like most people you probably can't even
check how much memory your computer has, let-alone if your
computer is wireless enabled. Throw in the fact that you may
not even know what wireless networking is and it's easy to
ignore even trying to determine if your computer has that
capacity. As a result, having ever taken the time to set it
up is clearly out of the question.
However, since you bought your computer you've probably heard
more and more about "going wireless" because it's
becoming the hip thing to do. If that's the case with you
or I've simply peaked your imagination then read a bit more
because I've outlined a few things you can to do to check
if your computer has wireless capabilities.
Laptops - Intel Centrino Mobile Technology
Computer manufacturers do less than a perfect job at explaining
what this means but if you if your laptop came with this built
in then that's good news for you! In a nutshell, it means
that your laptop has wireless networking built right in and
you don't have to do a thing. Intel Centrino Mobile Technology
is a marketing name for a combination of the Intel Pentium
M processor and Intel's' Pro Wireless card.
If you have Intel Centrino Mobile Technology then your computer
should have a "Centrino" sticker on it somewhere.
If you can't find a sticker but you suspect you had one at
one time then simply do the following. Right click on your
"My Computer" icon. It's probably on your desktop
but if not then go to your Start Menu, find My Computer, right-click
and select Properties. When the menu opens look at what it
says after or under the word Computer.
On a side note, Intel Centrino Mobile Technology also increases
battery life and allows manufacturers to build computers smaller.
If you can't find anything referring to Intel Centrino Mobile
Technology under the word Computer -- don't worry because
as long as your laptop has a free card slot, installing wireless
is a piece of cake.
Desktop Computers
If you're not sure whether or not your desktop computer has
a wireless connection, the easiest thing to do is to simply
turn it around and look for a small aerial sticking out of
the back towards the bottom. If it's there then you are wireless
enabled. On the other hand, if there's nothing then it's still
possible that you have a wireless device in the computer,
especially if you purchased anytime in 2005 or beyond. However,
because it's not the best idea (unless you've done it before)
to try and open up your computer to check something I'll show
you a way to check, if your wireless enabled, using Windows.
Using Windows to Check Wireless Capacity
Rather than messing with your computers hardware to verify
what you've got installed, you can just as easily check using
your Windows' Device Manager. To use it, right click My Computer
/ Choose Manage / and then click Device Manager.
After you click Device Manager a list of everything you can
install will appear on the right half of the screen. Take
a look under Network adapters and ignore anything that says
10/100 or Ethernet because they are simply normal network
connections -- not wireless ones. If there's anything else
there, it could be a wireless device.
If you think you have a wireless device, but it has a yellow
warning sign alongside its name in the Device Manager, you
should take a look at it to see what's wrong by double clicking
on it. Windows should then tell you why the device is not
working at the moment and may even suggest that you go through
its troubleshooter program. Do that before you do anything
else.
If it turns out to be a driver problem, you should insert
the driver CD that came with your computer. If you can't find
the driver CD that came with your computer - don't worry because
you should be able to find and then download the appropriate
driver online. The first step would be to go to website of
your computers manufacturer and do a search for the name of
the wireless device that showed up in your Device Manager.
Once you find the correct driver simply download it and follow
the instructions.
After all this (actually about 5 minutes) you may discover
that you don't have a wireless enabled computer -- oh well,
those are the breaks. However, it's clearly better to find
out your computers wireless capacity now -- before you go
out and buy some wireless equipment and then realize that
you didn't even need it.
This article may be reproduced only in its entirety.
About the Author:
Kevin Erickson is an entrepreneur and writer. To read other
articles he's written visit: Wireless Internet | VoIP Provider
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