Dell Wireless 1540 - Good/Bad?

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tangoseal

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I have a client that has a Dell E5430 lattitude laptop and her wireless card is going bad.

I want to upgrade. According to Dell we can purchase a Dell 1540 Wifi card to install which will upgrade from a/b/g to a/b/g/n.

I would much rather just purchase an Intel 7260 instead.

Any suggestions on compatibility and/or options? Are all MiniPCIe cards the same? The laptop has Win7 so drivers will not be an issue.

Any thing special with Dell I need to know, such as some special bios to hardware lockouts where only their stuff works? Sorry never work with Dell. I think they are cheap machines.
 
The 1501 was gutted and single stream on wireless N aka 72Mbps max

The newer Dell 1540 was surprisingly decent.

The Intel 7260 just works.
 
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Experience says that Atheros chipsets such as AR9382-based card would work much better and have better range compared to Intels N-series and given that AC is still being developed I'd stick with a good and mature 11n. That said, it seems that you would need a whitelist(ed) BIOS.
//Danne
 
The Dell 1530/40wireless cards are absolutely terrrible. They're the most inconsistent cards I've ever dealt with. We replaced every Dell wireless nic with Intel and now every device comes with a Intel nic standard. Just avoid Dell wireless at all cost. Do yourself a favor and get anything but an Dell wireless nic.
 
Dell cards are horrible, wireless or wired does not matter.
I am wrestling with one in my M4800 as we speak.
 
You say your client is having wifi problems? I have a client with the identical laptop with a Dell Wireless 1504 wifi adapter. It started going bad. Dropping off the network, losing dhcp lease and not getting it. Now it gets where the laptop is on for a few minutes and the wifi adapter completely disappears from the device manager & system bios. Tried reseating the card, updating drivers, updating BIOS, etc. Couldn't get it fixed. So I had Dell ship out a new wifi card, a Dell Wireless 1540. Same issue out of the box. Then I had Dell replace the motherboard & wireless card. And now my client is saying the problem is back. What gives Dell?!?!
 
At least Toshiba doesn't black/whitelists cards on their business computers... ;-)
//Danne
 
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