Help needed with Intel Wireless antennas colors

I have an m1530 with the Dell 1505 Wireless N which sucks big time in terms of reception and range.

I am going to replace it with the Intel 4965 card. Now the Dell card has only 2 antenna connectors which are labeled white and black and are connected to their respective antenna wires. I have the extra grey cable which is not connected to anything.

The problem with buying the Intel card is that in the retail version the connectors are labeled 1, 2 and 3 as you can see in the attached picture. The Dell OEM version is labeled by color (Black, white, and gray). I do not know how the colors correspond to the numbers.

Can some kind soul look at his card and tell me the order of the cables.

Thanks in advance.

 

All antennas are the same. It doesnt matter which color attaches to which number. They are all identical. Just connect it as to make you feel is organized and neat. You could go black, white, gray. white, gray, black. It doesn't make no difference whatsoever and does not affect the performance of your wireless card whatsoever.

The gray cable not connected to anything is specifically used for the Intel wireless card you have. Congrats, you can now make use of it with a 3rd antenna! It doesnt matter which one it plugs into, its all the same.

If you wanted to be conservative, you can choose to not plug in the black cable and plug in the white and gray and it'd work just as if you plugged in the gray for the black.

Bottom line: Order doesn't matter.

 

I also have the Dell 1505 and it has worked well: I would be interested in how much better your xps performs with the Intel card installed.

 

How come the Dell card only has two connectors. I thought wireless N technology requires a third antenna.

 

On my M1730: Black = 1, White = 2, Grey = 3 (middle). On my 4965AGN the points have white/black/grey triangles though, not numbers like in that photo!

 

Which is why the 1505 seems to have sub-par performance. The third antenna is supposed to create another communication channel between the station and the computer. Without it, speed and range decrease.

 

I received the new Intel Card and installed it. With the Dell 1505 I was getting 2-4 signal bars in the living room where I am mainly using the laptop. The Linksys router is in the study, about 50 feet and a few walls way. I was having also a lot of problems connecting because of complaints about the signal. At the the same time, My Toshiba laptop with an Atheros card worked great.

With the Intel card, I am getting a solid 5 bars signal. One or twice I saw it drop to 4 bars but quickly jumb back to 5 bars.

My router is a Linksys WRT54GL. So I am not using the N yet.