When did Laptops start having built in wireless adapters?
I bought a USB wireless adapter not not knowing my laptop had built in wireless.
What’s the point of selling USB adapters if you can connect wirelessly without them.
In 2003 Apple introduced the 17" g4 laptop with built in airport.
About the same time Intel dropped the Centrino mobile chipset, which had built in wireless capacity.
So 2003 would be the year, you could probably trace the announcements back to about April of that year, before that you could easily get PCMCIA card to get you conncted, but it was an add on.
My guess is that by Christmas season 2003 most New laptops were carrying onbord built in 802.11 technology.
As for the USB dongle you bought, If you are feeling frisky you could try to bridge your two connections, but frankly you’d be better off returning it, or saving it for a rainy day when you internal goes hinkey…
Not all laptops have built in WiFi connectors. For ones that don’t, a USB one would be their solution. Also the built-in ones aren’t always reliable so having an external USB one helps.
Also internal WiFi connectors tend to only be able to connect to A/B, or B/G, or A/B/G networks, some even do the N network. But for those that don’t, USB ones with whatever network you wish to connect to can be purchased.
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Most laptops have come standard with wireless adapters for about the past 5 or 6 years.
A lot of people use wireless adapters for desktop computers, older laptops, or laptops with broken built in adapters.
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Almost since they released Laptops is your first answer.
The reason for USB Adapters are there are still several machines that are sold with just Ethernet Ports without Wireless Cards
Therefore it is to these peoples advantage to purchase a USB Wireless Adapter if they have a Wireless Router and want to have wireless
References :
In 2003 Apple introduced the 17" g4 laptop with built in airport.
About the same time Intel dropped the Centrino mobile chipset, which had built in wireless capacity.
So 2003 would be the year, you could probably trace the announcements back to about April of that year, before that you could easily get PCMCIA card to get you conncted, but it was an add on.
My guess is that by Christmas season 2003 most New laptops were carrying onbord built in 802.11 technology.
As for the USB dongle you bought, If you are feeling frisky you could try to bridge your two connections, but frankly you’d be better off returning it, or saving it for a rainy day when you internal goes hinkey…
References :