Internal Wi-Fi sucks, what can I do?

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BoyBlunder

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 10, 2003
Messages
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The eternal Wi-Fi on my Satellite has been sucking on an oversized egg lately, so I've been thinking of buying a wireless adapter for my PCMCIA slot...should I?

What are some good ones?
 
What kinda wifi card? The intel 2100 that's bundled with the Centrino? Has the lappy been dropped at all? It's possible that the antenna came loose... What kinda AP? Environment?
 
I had an orinco based card a while back, it got butt-raped by cordless phone traffic (I live in an apartment). The newer one I got that cost half as much (dunno what chipset it is) has a much better connection to the same router.
 
Originally posted by Nate7311
What kinda wifi card? The intel 2100 that's bundled with the Centrino? Has the lappy been dropped at all? It's possible that the antenna came loose... What kinda AP? Environment?
Click to expand...

yea, it's the 2100. the laptop hasn't been dropped at all. i use it on campus all the time, and i have a hard time getting good signals :(
 
Yeah, I hear ya. Unfortunately, I'd guess that most likely you're just dealing with all of the interferance in the 2.4Ghz range. But there is a slight chance that is hardware related. Personally with my Compaq x1000 (Centrino based) The Wifi reception is excellent. Well beyond the limits of my house. But none of my neighbors have 2.4Ghz phones either. and I suspect that they are in abundance at you dorm.
 
anything that i could do about this interference? i've seen seperate wi-fi cards that will not be affected by interference...maybe i should get one of those?
 
That's kinda odd. are you connecting to your OWN AP or is it the school's, friend's etc...

If it's yours then try changing the channel the AP broadcasts on.
 
You may want to alter the power saving options for the 2100, as it decreases the power consumption when on battery, see if that helps (although your battery life will suffer)
 
Originally posted by Nate7311
That's kinda odd. are you connecting to your OWN AP or is it the school's, friend's etc...

If it's yours then try changing the channel the AP broadcasts on.
Click to expand...

i don't have an AP, the school does & that's what i connect to :(
 
When I had my Powerbook (it's the Titanium one, the case acts as a Faraday cage), I went ahead and bought a 5dbi antenna and connected it to the Airport card.

Worked incredibly well, and freaked people out at Airports :D

I'm not sure what I'll do about the Thinkpad, probably go with a PCMCIA card and a similar setup, I'm thinking a 6ft omni out of my backpack :p

6.jpg
 
Another option.

Hack your wap and card's firmware setting to make it output more than the wimpy 30mW of signal.

My Wap puts out a good 130mW of signal as does my onboard laptop card.

There are even more changes you can make to the wap to make it output up to 5W but those will definetly make the FCC come looking for you and they require changes to the circuit board in the WAP.

Do google searches on increasing output of wireless devices.
 
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