Acer Aspire 5750G: 802.11n supports only 2.4 GHz, not 5 Ghz

After buying an Acer Aspire 5750G-2454G75Mnkk, I was disappointed to discover its’ 802.11n support is not complete. It only supports the 2.4 GHz frequency band, and not the 5 GHz frequency band. Apparently this is an issue with many—even most—PCs on sale today, and most consumers have no way of determining this prior to buying (unless compatibility with 802.11a is a hint).

What kind of network card is inside this machine? Mini PCI Express? If so, full or half-height? (The Properties for the card are Atheros AR5B97, driver version 9.2.0.432.)

Could the lack of 5 GHz support be due only to the omission of a third antenna?

Will a third-party 802.11n card work in this machine? Will a BIOS mod be required?

 

It's a half height mini-PCI Express which can be replaced with no trouble.
No BIOS mods required either.

5GHz support has nothing to do with number of antennas- it's just that the card does not support 5GHz band.

Replace it with an Intel 6200 and you're going to be fine as long as you avoid Intel cards for Lenovo notebooks (these don't work)

 

Thanks, downloads. Are you certain about the BIOS? I've read elsewhere that this machine (and many others) have a MAC address whitelist to prevent usage of third-party WLAN cards. Acer themselves also alluded to this in my communication with them: “…for example an Intel card you can not activate this card, because the card ID is different from the ones we use and the bios cant activate it.”

 

Acer has never used BIOS whitelisting and so far I'm yet to see an Acer that uses it so to my best knowledge you're safe (again- as long as you don't buy a card meant for Lenovo)