Is Your Laptop Or Home Computer Wireless Enabled?

By: Kevin Erickson

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 Trade Show Display