See my post of a few seconds ago where I reported the results of three sets of phone calls to HP today.
I have asked Jeff to clarify what they told me, but here's the scoop.
In the end, they said, that the "ac" card was backwards compatible, so, that meant that the ac card contained *both* frequencies, but the caveat was that the "ac" card was *not* dual band.
When I asked them to clarify, they said it doesn't work on both frequencies at the same time.
What does that really mean? Is having two bands dual band, or not?
After my conversation with HP today, I found out that their "ac" card has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz because it is backward compatible, but they said that backwards-compatible-ac-card is *not* a "dual band" card.
Apparently they defined "dual band" in a specific way, that excludes the fact that it has "two" bands.
See my previous posts. You just won't take yes for an answer. You identified the specific Intel 7265 card that goes in the PC. Googling shows it's dual band. I don't know what more you want. Instead of looking at that, you don't even address it and just ask the same thing all over again.
And one more time, how many customers do you think would be bitching if they bought a brand new PC with the latest AC Wifi adapter and it would not work with the many places that you might encounter the onlythat are still on 2.4Ghz?
Finding Office 2007 replacement CD's is trivial. Hint: BitTorrent.
If it were purchased online from the Microsoft site, and you have the magic serial number, you can download a replacement ISO image.
Yep. I vaguely recall that Office 2007 works on 2 machines. Not sure.
I'm technical and I hate complexity. Teachers have students, which just love to help with such things. Some of the teenage hackers are quite knowledgeable and have impressive experience in the dark arts of computing. Ask the students for help.
Maybe, but that hasn't been my experience. I can read most anything produced by Office 2007, 2010, and 2013 with Office 2003 and the MS Compatibility Pack: However, if there's a problem, I just ask the author to Save As: Word
97 format.
The way you can tell when it's time to upgrade is when you can't get the work done or that it's painful to use. I have no problems reading or writing with Office 2003 and various file format converters. I find Office 2007/2010 to be tedious, awkward, clumsy, and not much of an improvement over Office 2003. In other words, a step backwards. If your really think it's time for a change, I suggest they step into the (disk) space age, and take the great leap forward to Cloud Computing with a Chromebook and Google Office.
Outlooks is dead anyway because Windoze 10 includes mail and calendar apps.
Pay nothing and use Google Office, LibreOffice, or similar free alternatives.
Well, you're right about not using your brain. What I find odd is that your primary reason to spend the money is the inability or unwillingness of a teacher to learn something new. I've seen this phenomenon with teachers in the past, where the monotonous repetition of cramming facts into students heads eventually leads to intellectual ossification. Even in computing, I guess perpetual reptition of the same mistakes is considered a good reason not to change one's habits. Personally, I find the logic disgusting, but I promised to improve my diplomacy and won't push the point any further.
Here's what I suggest:
Have the teacher beg, borrow, buy, or steal a Chromebook. I have several Acer products and find them quite good and cheap. The various C720 models are what I use and like (also to run Linux). Figure about 0 to 5 refurbished.
Have one or more of the teachers students setup the Chromebook so that it's ready to use. The learning curve is not very steep or long, but since that seems to be an issue here, faster is better.
Have the teacher learn to user various Cloud Computing services, such as Google Cloud, MS Skydrive/OneDrive, etc. Also have the teacher learn to run apps inside the browser. If MS Word is required, then MS has the real thing available:
If the teacher makes it this far, the rest should be obvious.
Please note that I did not suggest that you call support. I suggested you call pre-sales support (shopping team or something similar) and ask what model Intel wireless card is the "ac" device.
Sorta, if I read between the lines.
"ac" is always backwards compatible to "a". It has to be. Short lecture follows:
If you force the wireless router (not the client radio in the laptop) to do only "ac", then the maximum from router to laptop will be rather short. Basically, at a fixed power level, you trade range for speed. "ac" is all about speed, so the range decreases when it's used. If the BER (bit error rate) increases above some pre-programmed level, the router in "ac" mode will slow down, eventually going to the slowest "ac" mode speed. To go slower than that, it would need to revert to some "n" mode. Once the router slows down to the slowest "n" mode, it will need to go to ordinary "a" mode. If it didn't go: ac -> n -> a the wireless connection would not work more than a few feet in "ac" mode. Therefore, to obtain tolerable performance at reasonable ranges, the wireless devices need to support all the modes down to "a".
There is one exception. 802.11b is so disgustingly slow that the
802.11n spec (and others) demand that 802.11b be disabled if 802.11n is active.
End of lecture section (for now). Quiz to follow.
Now, on to the "dual band" problem. The issue of "simultaneous dual band" is more of a router problem than a client radio problem. The usual idea is that you can have different devices use different bands as required. To do this requires simultaneous dual band in the router, but not in the laptop client radio. For example, I've setup Roku wireless media player boxes to use 5GHz, while the laptops and tablets are all on 2.4 Ghz. I've also done the reverse, when there's so much screaming media traffic on 2.4Ghz that the only band that's usable is 5GHz. Simultaneous dual band is (in my opinion) a requirement for wireless routers and access points. However, for laptops, tablets, and wireless client radios, it's only useful for marketing types that want to advertise higher speeds. There are protocols for bonding both the
2.4 and 5GHz channels between a laptop and a router in order to get higher download speeds. You're not going to see that on a $350 laptop and don't need it anyway. Therefore, the HP phone person was right that it's one band at a time, not both simultaneously.
Incidentally, the Bluetooth device shares the same radio as the 2.4GHz wi-fi section and are setup to alternate their operation so as to not mutually interfere with each other.
It means you've educated the HP phone support person. Somehow, I don't think that was your intent.
I just hate it when you ask consistently good questions. I feel obligated to answer when I would rather roll over and die from spending most of the Labor Day holiday running wires under a house. I'm getting too old for this kind of work.
Operating on both frequencies at the same time is called "simultaneous dual band". This is commonly found in wireless routers and wireless access points, but not in wireless client radios, like the one in your prospective HP laptop. The wireless router needs simultaneous dual band because it might have two different users, connected at the same time, each on a different band. Were the radio NOT simultaneous dual band, the traffic bandwidth would be roughly cut in half because the wireless router radio would need to switch back and forth between the two users. However, with simultaneous dual band, it could service both users at the same time without any loss of bandwidth.
Yep, however those were incorporated into the 802.11b specification. The two slowest speeds of 1 and 2 Mbit/sec became part of 802.11b when
5.5 and 11 Mbits/sec were added. Besides DSSS (direct sequence spread spectrum) there were also a few FHSS (frequency hopping spread spectrum) promoted by Raytheon, Breezecom (Alviron), and TI. However, you won't see these in modern equipment, unless you include BlueGoof, which is FHSS.
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