Turning Wifi on and off

I'm new to laptops, so this may just be me being dumb, but how do I know whether my wifi is on or off? I won't have wireless internet access for a couple weeks. In the mean time, I heard that leaving your wifi turned on will drain your battery. How do I make sure that it is off? The wifi switch in the front will slide to the right, but it goes back to the left on its own. Doing this changes the led from being off to flashing. I assumed that the led being off meant that it wasn't looking for wireless, but I've randomly been told that it found a wireless connection for a couple seconds while the light wasn't on. Also, sometimes the led will start flashing even if I haven't touched the switch on the front. The manual says that this is, indeed, the wifi switch, but it gives no information about the led or anything. Could anyone here please let me know how it works and what everything means?

EDIT: Whoops, forgot the info. I have an aspire one ZG5. Win XP, 1gb RAM, box says 120gb hd, but 'my computer' says 144gb.

 

The expected behaviour is that it is a slide switch that returns to the left on its own, and that each use toggles the wifi on or off. The light to the right should come on and off to indicate this. I'm not sure what your flashing behaviour indicates - I've never encountered it.

Incidentally, sounds like you've got a bonus bigger hard drive - Acer have apparently been shipping newer AAOs with mysteriously bigger drives. They probably got a bulk deal on some somewhere!

 

Thanks for the reply. The light to the right is the one that flashes. It flashes about once every 10 seconds. The one to the left doesn't come on at all.

So you're saying that the right-most light should stay constantly on when wifi is on, and constantly off to indicate that wifi is off, right? I'll be visiting someone with wifi next week. I'll see if it will connect when I'm there.

Thanks for the help!

 

When the light to the right is ON solid, that means the wireless is turned on, but not sending/receiving anything. Blinking indicates that the wife is sending/receiving, or looking for a network. No light at all means the wireless card is turned OFF.

 

Alright, it seems like the light is working as expected when I have a good wireless signal available. Thanks for your help!