[imagine9]

I have the 1121 version of the 11Z and do not need the WIMAX or WANN cards and have removed these. Internally on the computer there are now open slots for a PCIe mini card and a PCIe half-mini card.

I am trying to find the best WIFI card and best Bluetooth card for my computer. I am not interested in external USB adapters for Bluetooth.

I have tried the Intel Centrino 6230 card which offers both WIFI and Bluetooth in one card but the Bluetooth does not work correctly. I have also tried the Intel 6300 WIFI card but in order to access full speeds you need three antenna wires which I don't have.

I prefer to have the WIFI service on one card and the Bluetooth service on the other card. Don't care which service uses the half slot, just want the best performance for each service.

To my surprise it's been really tough to find who the best manufacturer of these products would be. Any suggestions?

[Jammyb]

eBay for the dell bluetooth 365 chip. About £8. Plugs into board underneath touchpad bottom left. Works with bios and dell management program.

For the wifi I'm using the stock broadcom chip it came with. Does the job have no need for N wifi yet so no point upgrading! I too bought the 6230 but what a POS to try to get the Bluetooth working!

[imagine9]

Yeah 6230 Bluetooth has issues! Got the Dell Bluetooth 370 PCIe chip and will put it in the slot vacated by the WWAN card. Don't see a plugin for the 365, don't think my 1121 version of the 11z has one.

[Jammyb]

Mines the celeron one. I'll dig out the dell links showing how to take apart and fit the Bluetooth!

[imagine9]

If you have a Celeron chip I'm pretty sure you have the 1110 version of the 11z which is a little different on the inside than the 1121 version I have. The 1121 does not have that plugin for bluetooth that yours does. I'm hoping the Dell 370 bluetooth chip I ordered will work correctly when installed into the WWAN slot.

[Jammyb]

Documentation

[imagine9]

Compare our two service manuals below and you'll notice no bluetooth on the 1121:

1110 - 11z

1121 - 11z

[loooney2ns]

The 1121 is basically the m101z with an Intel i3 chip instead of the AMD. I have one on order now to replace my m101z, which I sold for the same price I paid for the 1121. The other difference is that the 1121 uses DDR3 ram and the m101z uses DDR2. I just have to figure out the Bluetooth issue. I'll probably replace the Sprint card with a Dell 370 card, although I am wondering what else I can put in the slot. An SSD, TV tuner, GPS? I don't know what will work yet.

[brookheather]

The M101z uses DDR3 not DDR2.

[palawan]

Many thanks to this wonderful Dell forum, I examined closely the eBay listing before I bought the Dell 1121 (11z) Sprint version - Intel core i3. Because of this particular thread, i realized that there is no bluetooth. NOT good for me.

Before I received the Dell 1121, I already had the 4gb ddr3 ram and the
DELL DW1702 FJJTN Wireless wifi N & BT 3.0+HS Card waiting to be installed. the 4gb ram was purchased from newegg and the wifi + bluetooth from eBay.

the dell 1121 came in brand new and sealed. it did not see a first boot. i opened it up, took out the mechanical hard drive, used easeus partition software and shrunk the partitions so that the dell diagnostic partition (100MB), the recovery partition (12GB), and the OS partition (win7 64bit - 23gb) totaled 35GB. the rest of the hard drive over 200GB was unallocated.

i booted ultimate boot CD, used acronis to copy the 3 partitions to my ocz 40gb vertex 2 ssd (which was taken out of my old samsung nf310). used bartpe and bcdedit from another win7 machine (32bit) and configured the bootmgr (residing on the active partition - recovery partition)

installed the ssd and replaced the wifi/wimax with the wifi/bluetooth card.

voila! i booted successfully to a dell factory image of windows 7. uninstalled as much bloatware i can find, transferred my data, configured the wifi, and bluetooth. tested the bluetooth tethering to the nokia 5230 (all good - even using it at this time). tested connectivity to jabra bluetooth bt2050 (all good - i use this everyday for google voice).

i recommend the dell dw1702 wifi and bluetooth. the drivers came from the dell website (i think vista drivers). a little quirk - when i'm talking on the google voice, sometimes the volume would turn up very high on my end, but normal for the other person at the other end of the call. i fix it by muting and unmuting. dunno if it's the jabra or the bluetooth module that's having the problem. it happens very seldom and the fix is easy to do.

bluetooth range is easily over 20 feet, as i was able to carry a conversation while going to the kitchen and the dell 1121 is at my desk (this is at work).