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See that picture above? That’s a picture of the Dell Inspiron Mini 10 netbook with a TV antenna plugged into the internal TV tuner. Engadget snapped the photo a while back, and silly me, I figured it meant that Dell would actually ship the computer with this antenna… or at least offer it as an accessory on its web site. But it turns out that customers who ordered netbooks with the TV tuner option are discovering that the computers ship without an antenna or even an adapter for an antenna.

That wouldn’t be a major problem if we were talking about the kind of TV tuner designed for desktop computers, because these typically have coaxial cable inputs. But the Inspiron Mini’s TV tuner uses a smaller jack, which means you can’t just plug any old antenna into it. You may have some luck witht he MXC antennas or adapters that you can find on eBay for about $3 and up. But Dell doesn’t make it very clear in the user manual exactly which kind of antenna or adapter you need.

If you really want a TV tuner for your Inspiron Mini 10 that will work out of the box, you might be better off ordering a USB tuner from Dell or another store.

Update: It looks like Dell is finally shipping antennae to affected customers.

via Portable Monkey