Acer WiFi button ?

Ice Tea · 15 Sep 2007 at 07:47

Hi

I'm thinking of buying my first laptop an Acer Aspire and it has quick launch key for Wifi , Does anybody know if this key phisically turns off WiFi or just disables windows from working with it ?

Thanks

munk · 15 Sep 2007 at 13:20

Just checked on my laptop and if you enable the card through windows you cannot detect any wireless networks untill the laptop wifi button is switched on.
So i would say it completly turns of the card, to preserve battery power.

Ice Tea · 16 Sep 2007 at 02:00

Thanks Munk

Is your lapto an Acer and is your WiFi button a quick launch key with the brightness settings as some laptops have there own dedicated slider or button for wifi.

mctiny · 16 Sep 2007 at 02:57

You have a button on the front of the laptop for the WiFi and the brightness keys are the arrow keys using the "fn" key.

sidefxv1 · 16 Sep 2007 at 03:20

Slight OT, but I generally don't install the Acer Manager software (Or whatever it's called. eManager? iManager? aManager?) so the Acer wifi button doesn't work. However selecting "Disable" for the connection in windows seems to have the same effect, since battery usage seems to improve once it's disabled. Does anybody know if this would be true or am I just imagining it? Also does anybody know of free replacement software for the Acer Manager software that isn't quite as bloated? I generally don't use any of the extra guff it installs, all I want is that Wifi button to work....

memyselfandi · 16 Sep 2007 at 10:54

munk said:
Just checked on my laptop and if you enable the card through windows you cannot detect any wireless networks untill the laptop wifi button is switched on.
So i would say it completly turns of the card, to preserve battery power.

I think that this is the case. I know that when I had Linux installed on my Aspire 5024 I had to compile a special ACPI kernel module in order to enable the button and without the module the wireless couldn't be enabled as the system defaulted to it being turned off.

Ice Tea · 17 Sep 2007 at 00:07

Thanks thats just what i wanted to know as some laptops that disable the WiFi via windows control panel are not completly off so when you install linux the WiFi card is active again which is not what i wanted.