XPS 1330 wireless N antennas

When the secretary ordered my new 1330 she put down the wrong wireless card and I didn't get a wireless N card. So I ordered one off ebay. I installed it but noticed there are only 2 antenna cables (white and black). In the manual on page 137 it talks about a grey cable also. Can someone who ordered their laptop with wireless N confirm to me if they have the grey one or not. Also does anyone know the purpose of the grey one?

Thanks

 

no one who ordered LED got the grey one...

 

Ahh thats lame. How will this affect performance? Can you just use one of the connectors from the wwan?

 

I ordered a (pre-alpine) white and got the LED option. The gray cable is there, but it is too short to reach the antenna port on the wifi card. Following the cable from the back of the LCD, under the keyboard, through the hole in the center and to the wireless card reveals that nothing short of replacing the cable or modifying the cable length will get you that third (necessary for pre-N traffic) cable to plug in, it's just too short. This will not affect your A/G/B traffic performance. You might be able to reroute that cable to go straighter under the keyboard, but the result would be a floppy keyboard, and I still don't think it would reach.

My replacement is coming. The LED LCD has noticeable lines going through it. I suppose they'll be sending me an alpine white to replace my pearlescent white unit.

Funny, I too had the uneven base. Solution? Bend it over your knee with the LCD open and hand on each corner. Really, it works, the unit is mostly metal, and therfore, is bendable.

Interesting fact, CPU whine doesn't occur in Linux, even with powersaved clocking the cpu down respectively.

RMclock doesn't completely eliminate noise, even with HLT command and all other possible functions. Still there. If you like windows, and the m1330, I hope you like music too

Sorry I know this is mostly off topic but I'm too lazy to make another thread.

O yeah, and I'll never buy ANYTHING that says Chi Mei on it again. This is the worst LCD I have ever seen, I wan't the CCFL!

 

Or, if you are worried about bending something important like the motherboard, you can use an x-acto knife and slice off a TINY bit of the rubber foot on one of the "high" corners to fix the wobble....

 

Or, even better, call Dell to have them fix it instead of bending your $2k computer over your knee and/or pretending to be a surgeon and operate on it....

 

it's a rubber foot, not a body part.

 

Nessie posted good info at http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2424439&postcount=19 and other places.

So the only advantage of 3 antennas for this Intel n card is antenna diversity. i.e. I presume this means the card looks at the signals on the antennas and decides not to use the one that is worst. Now it is quite possible that it is predictable which ones is going to be worst and not-used and so there would be no disadvantage in not running that aerial in the first place.

Probably the main reason for leaving out the grey antenna on the LED backlit screens is space, but I wonder if there is another factor... a CCFL back light might be producing more interference than the LED lights?? So maybe the LED screens give better radio performance than CCFL even though they have one less antenna (well I can dream... and I think some of the reviews of the M1330 I saw gave it very good ratings for radio performance/range).

So the last thing I am wondering about is the shorter grey antenna the LED screen models have - the one that doesn't reach. Do CCFL models also have this wire in addition to the longer one for the 'n' wireless card? I guess they should.
I speculated earlier it might be for wireless USB.

I would caution people from lengthening this shorter grey wire to reach the 'n' wireless card. It may not be designed to be for that card. Perhaps the length or other properties make it unsuitable.

Final rambling thought - the M1330 seems to have an awful lot of USB hubs/ports. OK - just two ports externally .. but looking in Device Manager on the "Advanced" tab for each USB device I have:

Generic USB Hub
- Dell wireless 355 Module with Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR Technology
- HID keyboard device
- HID compliant mouse
USB Controller 2830
- System reserved
- USB Browser mouse (this is my mouse attached to rh external port)
USB Controller 2831
- System reserved
USB Controller 2832
- System reserved
- Touchpoint Fingerprint Coprocessor
USB Controller 2834
- System reserved
- HID compliant mouse
- HID keyboard device
- Dell wireless 355 Module with Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR Technology
USB Controller 2835
- System reserved
USB Controller 2836
- System reserved
- USB Composite Device (could this be the touchpad?)
USB Controller 283A
- System reserved

A similar story looking at the "USB Root Hub" devices. They list a total of 15 ports "available" and 5 devices in use.

OK - so provision is needed to add the WLAN card or alternative (Turbo memory) - but it seems to me there is probably capacity for more devices in addition to that.
Are the touch-sensitive media controls using USB?
Is there any way to connect more USB devices?

 

Dells own marketing for this unit promotes 'Wireless USB' as a feature. No doubt the wiring for such an addition has already been implemented into the chassis design, whether currently utilised or not.

W-USB itself is touted to emerge on the market in the new year. So the actual hardware should also arrive to the M1330 within a similar timeframe. Don't be too surprised/alarmed if you do see the odd cable not connected to anything... unless of course you're having genuine hardware/performance issues, obviously.

It's merely an indication of the units scaleability and the bespoke nature of a Dell configuration.

 

Can we assume rhat you're not referring to the two extra wires for the WWAN card...?