Windows 7 - Is it possiblee to upgrade the wifi on Inspiron N5010

I currently own a Dell Inspiron N5010 laptop and want to upgrade the wifi capabilities of this laptop but I am unsure if it is possible or not.

It currently has the potential to download at 30 Mbs, so if I wanted to download at 50 or 100Mbs I would need to install another wifi card in the laptop.

The thing is though I have never even looked inside a laptop never mind upgraded one. Tell a lie I did install more RAM inside my machine but that is about it.

Can anyone advise please.

Regards

AF.

First of all, what is the speed of your connection to the internet thru your ISP? Most people are bottlenecked there since their wifi card is usually (not always) faster then their connection to the internet.

There are 3 common wifi standards, 802.11b, 802.11g and 802.11n. They're respective speeds are 11Mbs, 54Mbs & 300Mbs. Which of these do you presently have in your laptop?

Unless your laptop is really old, it most likely has g or n wifi capability. If your laptop has a g card now AND your internet connection speed is faster than 54Mbs then you would see an improvement by upgrading to an n card.

If you want to upgrade your laptop's wifi capability, you could contact Dell to ask if they have a card to upgrade the built-in wifi in your laptop. I did that for the Dell laptop I'm typing this post on.

An easier way to upgrade is to purchase a USB wifi adapter. In that case, you would disable the built-in wifi, plug the adapter into an available USB port and install the drivers that come with the adapter.

If you transfer large files between your laptop and other computers on your network, a faster wifi card will make a big difference but unless you have an exceptionally fast internet connection you probably won't gain any download speed.

My laptop curently has 72Mbps limit so downlown speeds are limited to 30Mbps. I currently have 30Mbps BB, but my ISP offers 50Mbps and 100Mbps. I understand that you can purchase dongles that allow you to have higher download speeds but I think I would rather have a built in wifi card.

I think i will contact dell and see if the they can tell me whether it is possible to install an internal card and if they sell one.

you can certainly replace the internal wifi thingy...

...but i don't know if/where you'll be able to find a more powerful one.

You could try this guy: Newegg.com - TP-LINK TL-WN811N 300Mbps Wireless N Cardbus Adapter

That isn't compatable with my PC. I have found one here: DELL Intel® WiFi Link 5100 Wireless Mini PCI-E Card 300Mbps

Just emailed them to see if it is compatable or not.