Wifi Catcher!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mine works perfectly. I haven't touched a single driver, my M1330 is stock.

 

Can you detail the behaviour of your catcher please? ie: what colours it flashes and for how long, etc. Thanks.

 

Hrm,

I have seen mine light up onc weeks ago. Right now it doesn work at all. It is enabled in bios and in quicket.

 

Well I've noticed some interesting things from my wifi catcher on my XPS M1330. At home when it's set (in Quickset) at the default of searching for both Weak and Strong signals, it only shows an amber light for 8-10 seconds even if right next to my wireless router. If I change Quickset setting to search for only Strong signals, then it does show solid blue (seems 1330 shows blue instead of green) for 8-10 seconds.

Now I tried it out at work. It's back on the search for both weak and strong signal setting, however at work it right away shows the solid blue for 8-10 seconds. This is even though the signal strength shows not as strong as it does for my home router.

Strange. I wish there were some full documentation of how/when/why this thing works. The stuff I could find from Dell is very vague and outdated even it seems.

 

I've got a WiFi Catcher on my D420... but since it doesn't distinguish between locked and open networks it's pretty much useless for me.

If it did tell you which networks were locked vs. open it would be a very cool feature.

 

Yea it would be pretty useless to me since I would only want to use it to detect open networks.

 

At least, when it shows no WiFi signal, you don't even bother to turn on your laptop. It is still better than booting up Windows and wait 2-5 min and find no WiFi.

 

just piping in here to say that mine doesn't work at all. I'll be 2 ft away from my router...I'll push the button and it'll give me a yellow light for a few seconds. I'll try it again, it'll flash blue for a few seconds. I'll give it another go, and nothing at all happens.

This thing's messed up.

*edit* I've tinkered with it a lot, and I think I've only seen it turn green once.

 

Interesting Development. I got my Intel 4965AGN cards in the mail yesterday and set them up in my 1720's.

WiFi catcher in windows complains that its settings are incorrect for the nic and the profile is being set to.... and its blank there. So I accept that and after the 3rd time check the check box to tell it not to bug me again about that.

In Windows I hit the switch and see all the access points. While Off it works as it is supposed to. I of course had to install the Dell 4965 drivers during this upgrade but I am pleasantly surprised it works now. Hrm... Now if I can find a use for it

 

I was having the same problem. I updated the BIOS to A08 and "repaired" QuickSet from the Add/Remove Programs list. The WiFi catcher operates properly now.

 

I would use my Nokia as my Wi-Fi signal catcher so this hardware device on the M1330 would be a bit of a useless novelty to me. My mobile can tell me if the signals are protected or not and if I'm not doing anything that requires a lot of text input I can just use Opera Mobile on the device instead of going to the trouble of booting up the notebook anyway.

I can't quite believe that there is no finite documentation for the switch though. That's an absurd oversight.