Intel 5350 Wimax Intel says is Illegal to install unless came with system.

I was told by Intel Tech support that is illegal for an enduser to install the intel 5350 wimax card as it can only be installed from the manufacture which will put a wimax sticker on the laptop.

also see this:
http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/CS-011644.htm

I have a Asus 60 laptop from Best Buy and after installing the windows drivers from intel it comes up in device manager as an unknown device. I am running Windows 7 Home Premium.

http://www.intel.com/support/wireless/wlan/sb/CS-011644.htm

 

What a bullcrap. Why is it illegal to install a wireless card on your own? How does installing a wireless card hurt other people? What a bunch of BS.

 

they say it has to do with something about systems needing to be fcc approved. i told them the card is fcc approved but they dont care and said it could be illegal to place any other card then in to the laptop.

They said only fcc approved laptops can use the intel 5350 and those laptops would gave a sticker that says wimax approved and would also come with a intel wimax card. i told them that was bs. I wold intel that ebay was selling tons of these on their and that since intel is so big i am sure that if it was illegal to sell them to non oem people that intel would have issued a cease and desist order to ebay stating not to sell intel products on ebay.

 

i still can not get it to work with any drivers, tried ibm drivers to no avail i am using windows 7 home premium. i install the wimax driver first then the wifi driver. any ideas.... could it be the same issue some epcs are having with usb support over mini card expansion slot? i do have a centrino 2 chip set and using asus g60 laptop from best buy.

 

Yeah, I looked at the links you provided, and I kind of get the idea of fcc approval thing. But then, if the manufacturer is selling the same laptop with the option to have the wireless card, then the fcc approved that kind of wireless card in the laptop.

So logically, it doesn't matter who install the card. Like I said, just a bunch of BS.

 

Try the driver plus software from Dell.

 

do you know which one to try? i read that the studio line would have them but i can not download those drivers as they are not on dells website for wimax for studio and xps studio....

 

I would try support.dell.com, choose Laptop->Latitude->E6500. Under communication, try the driver for wireless hsdpa 5530 minicard. Unzip it and, if it tells you that it is not compatible click ok. Go to device manager and find the device. Update the driver and find where you unzip the driver.

 

i will try it later, do you use the intel 5350 as well? the 5530 is a att 3g card, i did see the wimax 5150 driver for wimax....

 

No I don't use the wimax yet. You're right, my bad. It's not the 5530. It's the wifi/wimax driver. Try that.

 

thanks, i tried that and no go.... i think it might have the same issue that the asus eepc has with the mini card slot not supporting usb thing....

i gotta say i love this site... sevenforums thought i was making it up that intel told me that it may be illegal for me to install the card since it did not come with my system... not to trash sevenforums but they dont hold a candle to this site.

 

Here is a some info from one of the forum members here on this

Alex

 

interesting, i always thought it was legal and that intel had some other reason for saying it maybe illegal. otherwise what would people do with laptops out of warrenty. also then why are their usb cards fro wifi and wimax?

 

If you have a i945M chipset based notebook (Netbooks arn't affected) then you will most likely not be able to use the i5xx0 WLAN cards.

There is an issue with the card and the Chipset that stops the driver from starting, well it does for the 5 i945m Chipset Notebooks I have.

 

i have the intel mobile 4 series chipset... but cpu z says it is the pm45 chipset. so which is it?

also sometimes the intel 5150 shows up fine in device manager other times it shows up as an unknown device....

 

You have the Intel PM45 chipset quite a recent once (or 2 versions after the i945M)
This should work just fine with the i5xx0 WLAN devices.

Is it showing up in the Network devices ?
WLAN normally should go in here.

Not sure on how the WIMAX part works, I only got the i5300 card

 

They're the same thing. The Intel Mobile 4 Express series chipset can be PM45, GM45, GS45, GL40, or GS40.

 

As WiMax is subscription based, I would suspect that there is a connection manager software needed to connect to the network. You would probably also need an antenna.

Where are you? What WiMax network area are you in? I hope you get it to work and can share your experience on the speed and reliability soon.

 

I imagine the restrictions are for commercial reasons rather than legaility. That's the same for all OEM products - and TBH it's just cutting out the middle-man by going direct to the manufacturer. If you owned a store would you like losing customers to someone selling at wholesale prices? I've got no problem people make a fair profit, we all have a living to make.

 

If the card is flooded on eBay or Craigslist anyway, how would that make the store profitable? And how would one sell parts of their broken laptop and make some money out of it? Or are you suggesting that if the LCD is broken, you throw away the whole laptop parts?

 

FYI intel and many other OEMs are snowjobbing you, they ought to be careful about claiming matters of law as well.

If you start causing signal problems or (here is the only thing to actually think about) you resell the system to the wrong people is the only way the FCC would ever care. Until you interfere with something, nobody is running around with frequency counters and these things are so underpowered it would be a miracle if your laptop doesn't have proper shielding regardless.

However, beware that on ebay most if not all the cards for sale now are remarked engineering samples! The legit ones ran out months ago, the "generic" version of the card is not being made anymore.

While the hardware is likely just perfect the wimax certificates will not be considered "valid" by most ISPs...they're not "paid for" so to speak. These don't use wifi-style encrpytion, they have their own whitelist of certificates hence all the certification thats paid for. Thats assuming you can work around duplicate/dummy wimax adapter MAC address problem in the first place.

The wifi chips onboard are identical to retail 5300s and I've not seen any MAC problems there, multiple cards from the same source all have different valid intel range MACs. ES usually isn't an issue with lots of hardware and people have been selling it on the grey market forever (unless its just plain broken, or remarked to something fake) but this is one of those cases you will be straight up burned.

FWIW I use multiple legit and ES 5350s in desktops and laptops, they are very good cards. The wimax hardware in the ES versions DOES work, but I have access to some test networks running in prerelease area that are not configured like the launched ones will be. (you can also run your own if you really want, there have been some corp wimax bands around)
I've yet to try more than one of the ES at the same time either.

OP, yes you are running into the "this slot is not a fully wired minicard slot" issue. Many laptops that have 2 slots are actually splitting 1 physical slot into a pcie_x1 only and usb only slot, some larger laptops with 3 slots are only giving you 1 full slot and another two "half" slots.

Many dells I've run into do the latter. The fully wired slot is usually the WPAN, the WLAN is pcie_x1 only and the WWAN is usb only. Its rarely a problem because thats how nearly all wifi and broadband cards are made, the WPAN acts as a catchall for outlier configurations.

PS, intel will also generally ignore you if you try to confirm product validity...so much for the old days when if you told them you think you might have a remarked cpu they would phone you up and be your new best friend pumping for details.