Sure, you can use the Dell's built-in ethernet. But that depends on the basestation you are using and the rest of your set-up. It will work with Snow (Dual-Ethernet) and Airport Extreme base stations without problems, using the Graphite basestation it works as long as you don't use the built-in Ethernet port to connect to a DSL or cable modem.
got a dell truemoble card ( i think others have better connection quality it's a known issue for series 1150 cards like mine)
set up my airport without wep name your network
let windows recognize the network THEN CONFIGURE THE CONNECTION in wimdows
configured in windows AFTER dell recognized my airport and made sure that the wep was off on the dell/windows configuration ok ok i live in area where i don't have to worry about others accessing my network and bingo
if you want wep, get your password in os10 administrator to give you your password in HEXIDECIMAL, use this so windows recognizes it.
i'm using it now, granted the truemoble 1150 (mine) has connection quality problems, see dell support, in the same place the quality sometimes just drops then other times it is excellent, some people have more of a problem. you may want to use another casrd from say linksys or check cnet for opinions i'm not sure which windows card is best but they should all work
Like others have said, if you want the Dell to be wireless, you need to get a wireless device. Linksys makes quite a few. I've got a Linksys WUSB11. It plugs into the USB port. I've got mixed feelings about it at this point. We got it 3 weeks ago and it crapped out on us, so amazon set another. We'll how it does.
If you want to just make a network with other wireless computers, you can also just connect the ethernet card into a base station. That would work just fine.
There is no software solution you can use without getting the wireless hardware, however.
I used the pcmia slot, less cords but i'd prefer it integrated with the laptop with a better antena system, the slot cards for some are around 50-60$ maybe less for the "b" right now i can't justify paying for an airport upgrade and dell card upgrade to extreme, i don't think my iMac dv400 is capable of extreme, so even if i did, this slows the whole system down to regular airport card 11mps status, correct. anyway without more things using higher transfer rates my 11 is just fine.
Comments
got a dell truemoble card ( i think others have better connection quality it's a known issue for series 1150 cards like mine)
set up my airport without wep name your network
let windows recognize the network THEN CONFIGURE THE CONNECTION in wimdows
configured in windows AFTER dell recognized my airport and made sure that the wep was off on the dell/windows configuration ok ok i live in area where i don't have to worry about others accessing my network and bingo
if you want wep, get your password in os10 administrator to give you your password in HEXIDECIMAL, use this so windows recognizes it.
i'm using it now, granted the truemoble 1150 (mine) has connection quality problems, see dell support, in the same place the quality sometimes just drops then other times it is excellent, some people have more of a problem. you may want to use another casrd from say linksys or check cnet for opinions i'm not sure which windows card is best but they should all work
If you want to just make a network with other wireless computers, you can also just connect the ethernet card into a base station. That would work just fine.
There is no software solution you can use without getting the wireless hardware, however.