Thinkpads Forum

I recently got my T500 with a very poor signal wifi, Thinkpad BGN, a Realtek chipset. I would like to replace my Wifi card with either the Intel Wifi Link 5100 or 5300. However, I read somewhere that Lenovo specfically "whitelist" their wifi cards to only work with their laptops. I could not find any of the Intel wifi, moreover any wifi cards on the lenovo site. So, I went to hunt around in Amazon and found several sellers.

Plus would anyone tell me what sort of card I require, since there is a difference between mini cards and the full sized card, though I do not know which one my laptop support. Here are the specs for my laptop:
http://privatepaste.com/8b0537bce0

I would like to have confirmation which one of these specific cards as posted below will work on my laptop (or the one you recommend to have):

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-533ANMMWW-W ... roduct_top

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-WiFi-Link-5 ... 368&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-WiFi-Link-5 ... 368&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-WiFi-Link-5 ... 501&sr=1-1

would anyone confirm that this would work:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-Wifi-5300-Wir ... 6002r11019

yes, When I buy my t500, I changed the realtek wireless card for the intel 5300.
I buy it in ebay

derf wrote:would anyone confirm that this would work:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Intel-Wifi-5300-Wir ... 6002r11019

It highly likely that it wont work.

There are a few eBay sellers that list a Lenovo FRU in the Description text in the item listing...... you need to look for one of those. They will also be asking a higher price than for similar Intel WiFi cards which do not have Lenovo IDs embedded in their firmware.

Cheers,

Bill B.