Free with purchase of HP computer: one Mysterious Black Box
My father purchased a new computer from Hewlett Packard‘s direct sales website. Upon opening the box, he found one component he wasn’t expecting: A black box, about 1″ by 5″ by 5″, with an HP logo on it. It had three unlabeled coax connectors, and included no instructions. Also included was a 3-connector cable that matched the connectors on the black box, and a card inside the computer with matching connectors.
Upon finding the black box, he tried to find out what it was using HP’s website, but it is unmentioned and unpictured. We also looked at the site of Foxconn, who manufactured the device, and found nothing. Amusingly, an HP technical support representative reached on the phone was also unable to explain what the device might be.
He tried hooking the black box up to the computer to see if it would give us any clues. Nothing happened.
We spent a while googling potential answers: was it a speaker? Some kind of storage device? A power transformer or conditioner? A psychological test by HP to see if people would hook up any strange device they shipped?
Finally, fellow Gadgets Page writer Matt Strebe provided the answer: Apparently it’s a MIMO Antenna. MIMO (multiple-in, multiple-out) is a new type of antenna used with the new 802.11n Wifi standard. It uses multiple antennas to improve communication. In this case, there are apparently three antennas in one black box, hence the three wires.
- Here’s another example of a MIMO antenna made by ASUS. This time the three antennas are more obvious.
So apparently HP was concerned enough about helping customers join Wifi networks that they included an external antenna… but not concerned enough to include any sort of instructions. Or to mention it on their website. Or to tell their tech support people about it.
At any rate, if you’ve found yourself with a Mysterious Black Box, go ahead and hook it up if you plan on connecting your computer to a wireless network. (No, it won’t work as a hub—it’s just for connecting to an existing network.)
Laura’s response to all of this confusion: “That’s why he should have bought a Mac.”
We just bought a new ‘HP Pavilion Elite d5100t ATX PC’ and it came with the “Mysterious Black Box”. Just as you said, box did not come with any kind of instructions, nothing on hp website, and a one hour phone call to Customer Care revealed NOTHING. I searched Google for “HP black 3 connector” and found you. Thank you for this post.
Comment by jason — January 19, 2009 @ 2:58 pm