  **SOLUTION**  thanks in part to the previous post. Here's the Giga speed solution that worked for my new Dell Studio 1458.  I read a lot about the slow xfer speeds using the Broadcom NetLink LAN connection. There were two items I initially did not believe, but were in fact true. 1) You must use a CAT 6 line on ALL of your gigabit capable machines.  I though a good Cat5e line would support giga speeds.  It doesn't. Apparently, the Dell NetLink card does some initial negotiation with your router (kinda' like a fax machine), then after seeing all your connections,  it will drop the xfer speed down to the lowest common component (i.e. the Cat5e cable).  And; 2) The NetLink card will only give you giga speeds in the auto selection (advanced ethernet properties, speed & duplex).  The speed and duplex window will never  show 1000Mb!  You can verify whether your connection is10/100/1000 by double clicking your Local Area Connection icon. I verified the speeds of my giga connection via a test utility and by transferring a 200meg file.  The results indicated a speed increase from 12MB/sec to 26MB/sec. These numbers don't show a factor of ten increase in speeds we would all like to have (too bad), but they are in-line with other people's reported transfer speeds.   Hope this helps! 
Hello, I'm very pleased with my Alienware Aurora ALX purchase, and happy to be a part of this community.  However, I do have this issue: The Ethernet adapter won't connect at 1Gbps; here is what I've tried so far: 1) Confirmed that my router is capable of supporting Gigabit Ethernet.  I've got two other devices connected at this speed (an older PC and a NAS). 2) When I set the speed and duplex of the adapter to auto negotiate, it will only connect at 10mbps 3) I notice there is no setting for 1000Mbs in the speed and duplex options. 4) I tried 100Mb full duplex, it will connect but my Internet connection slows to less than 1Mbps (I'm on a 15Mbps connection, and testing the other PC it was able to achieve around 14Mbps). 5) I then tried 100Mb half duplex, this will also connect and my overall network performance is good. 6) I confirmed that I have the current driver from Dell. I've had the computer for 3 days (using windows 7 by the way). 7) I tried all the ports on my router and confirmed that the router side was also set to auto negotiate and not trying to force a specific speed. I'm hoping that someone has a solution or suggestion to fix this.   Kind Regards, Jason
broadcom gigabit netlink adapter won't connect at 1Gbps, auto negotiate 
connects at 10Mbps