Bigfoot killer wifi for the M11x?

That is not aesthetically pleasing. I'll stick with the 300mbps!

 

You can also install a extra antenna under the keyboard with this
Tyco Universal Wireless Laptop Antenna - Mini PCI U.FL - eBay (item 180533891969 end time Aug-09-11 23:43:31 PDT)

 

ejohnson, wouldn't the second version be better than what you did? Well.. other than having to take apart the lid as well to route with other antenna.

 

It would be easier yes, but the signal would be way low compaired to having them in the lid like stock or doing the external antenna that I pictured.

To install them under the keyboard you need to
Remove bottom cover
remove battery
remove keyboard screws (2 I think)
remove power button cover and remove 2 more screws for keyboard
pop up keyboard, undo ribbon cable
Install new antennas.

 

I just ordered the antenna and an 1103. Thanks ejohnson!

Triple Tyco Universal Wireless Laptop Antenna Mini PCI | eBay

 

Use these drivers for it
Support

Dell does list bigfoot drivers on their support page for the m11xr3, but they do not work for the older models.

 

Those of you who play WoW should be aware that there is currently an issue with the bigfoot wireless driver/software which prevents launching the game via launcher.exe. You have to create a shortcut to wow.exe and run the game that way. Bigfoot is aware but is pointing the finger at Blizzard so who knows if/when it will ever be resolved.

 

hmmm... interesting.. I have sc2 downloading right now. As soon as its done I will report if sc2 has the same problem.

 

How much better is the Wireless-N 1102 than the stock m11x card? And the intel card?

 

Curious, for the 1102's, is instillation just a matter of swapping out the stock Wi Fi card with the new one, or do I also have to worry about feeding the antenna?

And if I were to order a 1103, how would installing the extra antenna work?

Thanks in advance.

 

1102 is plug and play, 1103 needs a extra antenna to be installed.

 

Installed my Bigfoot Killer 1102 yesterday evening.
Just to reassure you, it's very easy and quick to do.

It's literally as soon as you take off the back cover. Take out the battery; hold the laptop power button for a few mins.

Turn the laptop back over, and you see the Wifi card instantly.
There are two wires that clip to it, when you unclip the wires they don't "move" - you don't have to feed them.

You simply unscrew one clearly visible screw; lift up the wifi card, put in the killer card. Screw it back down.

Then connect the two antennas to the card.

---

Performance wise.
I originally had the stock Dell 1150 card.
(I always thought I had the Intel till I re checked my order details)

After running speedtest, my ping has gone down 20-30.
Internet speed has increased, and so has my upload speed.

To put the difference in comparison – I’m staying with my family for a few weeks.
They have very poor internet – 0.75-1Mb/s with BT for very cheap.

The day before it arrived my DL speeds were Avg 380kb/s.
Now it’s Avg 470kb/s
I’m 30kb/s of my Ethernet DL speed.

Once I’m back home, with “30Mb/s DL speeds”
I’ll probably see a bigger improvement.

But even so, 100kb/s more, lower ping and the fact it comes with an amazing piece of software I can now watch youtube and steam running at the same time without pauses and high DL rates on steam.

For £35 I’m very happy with the improvement, definitely looking forward to the gain when I’m back home.

 

I played a little bf2 last night (first time I have had a chance to game with bigfoot)
I logged into a tricom server, the ones I usually always get booted from for high ping with my 6200 card. To my surprise my ping was hovering around 200 (still less than normal) but the game never lagged, never cut out, and felt like my ping was down under 20!

I will say that this card is pretty great... even with a high ping it doesnt feel like it.

 

My 1103 came in yesterday and I'm waiting for the 32gb micro and my antenna to come in before I open up the laptop again. ejohnson, which node did you connect the 3rd antenna wire?

 

I connected to the outer 2 ones, but took my 1103 out till my wwan card and extra antenna come in.... soon to have 5 antenna in my laptop

 

@ejohnson.

Ah thank you. Seeing as how I only want to open up the back cover to install, I'll go with the Killer 1102. Thanks

 

Just installed the 1103 with the additional antenna. My signal went from 3 bars to 4. My ping dropped also, almost half from the previous test. Overall, a decent boost from the 1102.

 

offtopic, Hammadurb what do you got build in with 2x MicroSD cards in the place where WWAN comes in. Could you please link it, it looks very interesting.

thank you


Nevermind, i found it.

Thank you
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m11x/595698-mpci-e-sd-wwan-answer-inside.html

 

My Application Control doesn't seem to be working correctly
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb316/Sillykwek/AppControl.jpg
Are you facing the same problem too?

 

Other people confirmed that the range had reduce with that Bigfoot ?


I may be interested in for school, cause wireless sometimes disconnect cause it's too far from our room, so it would be to have a wider range ... so it should be useless to me.


By the way, i'm SO surprised by the DL rates your are talking about ... I mean, with the card i have on my M11X R1 ( the one that came with it ) , and when i have a great internet connection, i reach 1200 kbs/s on a single download on Steam for exemple , so i'm a bit surprised when you're saying " i was about 300 kbs and now i'm 450" oO

 

My range dropped with the bigfoot from the intel 6200, but its better than the stock dell card still.

If you are in need of super range, click on my mods list in my signature and check out the wifi range mod. With the antenna that I have now I can pickup 40 wifi networks in my neighborhood (used to only pick up 5)

 

Already saw it , looks awesome. But my M11x is still under long warranty, i don't want to touch anything unless it's over. And i already saw your mod, it's awesome, but not the best about portabilty, i don't even take a mouse @school , i don't want to plug / unplug an antenna ^^

 

Just bought a Killer-N 1102 to replace the stock Intel 1000 in my M11x R3.

 

With the range mod, you dont need to have the antenna plugged in all the time. Since I have a 1103 card, I have 3 antenna. the 2 mains that came with the computer, then I have my high range 3rd antenna for when I have a weak singal.

 

So I think I might have made a big mistake. My M11x R3 that is coming soon has the Intel 1000N (which is a 1x2 card). I just ordered the Killer 1102-N (which is a 2x2 card). Does anyone know if the M11x R3 will come with 2 WLAN antennas installed or only 1 (since my M11x R3 has the 1x2 card)? If it does, how hard is it to install an extra WLAN antenna (so that I can properly use a 2x2 card)?

Edit: Looking at images for the Intel N 1000 it seems the card has 2 WLAN antenna leads...so I think I should be alright since the Killer 1102-N has 2 leads as well. Can anyone confirm this?

Further edit: Never mind me I am dense. I just realized that 1x2 denotes 1 transmitting antenna and 2 receiving antennae. 2x2 denotes 2 transmitting antennae and 2 receiving antennae.

 

1103 and three wire mod on r3

Screen:

FWIW don't take apart the screen. The one video I found made it seem straight forward to pop the casing. Well they must have changed it since it was for 1.0, because I broke a few of the retaining studs (not enough to make a difference thankfully). The screens surrounding foam was DOUBLE SIDED ** on the upper portion, so I had to carefully peel it off the actual LCD itself. In fact I was worried I cracked the screen as I had to pull so hard in a few places.

Then, finding a place in it for a third antennae was hard because either side have two large reflectors behind the screen for the 2 wires. I just said f it and stuck it untop of the whites reflector. My theory being that the third antenna's end was a plastic sheet with metal on one side. So I stuck the plastic backing between them. Seems to work. Though I cant say my range has increased much at all.

Finally, attempting to put the screen back together without flint and smear marks? PITA. Spent almost 40 minutes assembling it and then disassembling as new dust entered or missed a smudge.

If you want a third antennae? Just mount it under the keyboard. Sure it wont be as effective, but the difference I'm noticing is negligible in the screen versus 2. Anyone know a free program that can measure each antenna's signal percentage?

 

I put in a 1102 card in my unit and I am only getting 130mb, I take it that might be my router??

 

I have baught new M11xR3 and I baught it with Killer Wireless-N 1103 even then it has only two antennas and the third port on wireless card is left empty.

 

I installed the Killer Wireless 1102 in my M11x R2 and so far it's working perfectly. The Killer Wireless Network Manager software that comes with it is kinda buggy, but it's forgiveable when my pings went from 110 to almost 60 on the same wifi connection.

 

Likewise.

 

From which country you have ordered it UK? I have ordered it from DELL UK.

What should we do about that? Should we return the notebook and ask for 3 antennas?

 

Anyone know where I can get Bigfoot 1103 in the uk?

I've seen 1102 on ebay but no 1103.

 

Dell Austria (which is basically Dell Europe just like UK, I guess). I'm really not sure. I just put a spare antenna in I had lying around from older laptops. Didn't pull it through the screen, though, just had it run through the chassis where I could easily get to.

 

Did running it through the chassis make a difference. I just got my M11x R3 with the killer card in and was thinking about doing the same thing.

 

Very little. I did do the screen and it wasnt much of a difference. Even on a 450 N router.

 

thnx, i wont bother doing it then. just kinda sucks that i spent the money on it not knowing they only had two of them hooked up. guess my fault for not researching into it b4 purchasing the upgrade when i ordered my m11x.

 

Guess I will buy the 1102, don't want the hassle of installing another antenna.

 

so far the only problem im having with the 1103 is that wont allow wow to start form the game launcher. i called blizzard tech support and they told me it was due to the bigfoot card. they told me how to get around it until bigfoot releases a new drivers set that would correct it. not a huge problem though.

 

So in the end is the BIGFOOT card worth it?
Mostly wondering if it increases WIFI range, my router is downstairs and spotty at times.

 

I think so. My son and I both think it is faster than any of the cards in our other computers (4 of them). Left it setup the way it came shipped to me with only 2 ant hooked up. Glad i spent the money to upgrade to it from the other cards that alienware offers. Not to sure about the range due to I have a small single story home so my laptop is pretty close to the router. Its averaging about 216mbps which is a big increase over the 75mbps that my asus g73 gets. Hope this helps you make your decision.

 

It depends on what you have right now.

Its better than the stock card
Its faster/smoother than the intel 6200 cards
It has less range than the intel 6200 cards
The manager is nice, some people hate it though.
Firefox has some issues with the bigfoot cards.

 

Is the stock card a 6200?

 

No but it was a popular alt card on eBay n amazon

 

I've had the 1103 installed for the past week. Sweet card when paired with a Cisco E4200 running TomatoUSB firmware. Waiting for the Tyco aerials mentioned earlier in this thread to arrive early next week.

 

I noticed my computer has two WWAN antennas can I use one of them plus the two for WLAN for the 1103.

 

Sweet.

Have a Linksys E4200 running Tomato Toastman 2.4Ghz, 2.4Ghz/5Ghz OpenVPN/DNS server. Bla bla bla etc... Big 'Ups' to the Tomato developers.

Have an M11xR1 with standard WiFi card.

At 15 metres through a house with no real internal wall insulation (approx four walls) my M11x gets a signal of approx -60dB on 2.4Ghz and approx -67dB on 5Ghz as seen by inSSIDer on the M11xR1.



That's with the E4200 signal boosted to 70mW from approx. 42mW on 40Mhz.

I've been toying with the idea of a 'new' WiFi card, but with 12Mbps internet access and no real issues, I may just spend the money on lollies.

It's actually my 802.11g Android phone that's running out of steam at 15 metres and I have limited supplies of coal out the back.

The other thing to consider, is that as soon as a 802.11g device connects to a mixed mode WiFi router, it drops down to 54Mbps anyway.

Testing file access from a NAS connected to a Linksys E4200 router the M11xR1 gives the following WiFi results:

On 5Ghz I get 18.4MB/s ftp transfer rate at 1metre from the E4200 at 300Mbps connect speed. [note 1]

On 5Ghz I get 4.9MB/s ftp transfer rate at 15 metres from the E4200 at 54Mbps connect speed. [checks if 802.11g phone is still asleep. Shhhh....]

On 2.4Ghz I get 14.2MB/s ftp transfer rate at 1 metre from the E4200 at 243Mbps connect speed.

On 2.4Ghz I get 8.9MB/s ftp transfer rate at 15 metres from the E4200 at 108Mbps connect speed.

On 100 Full Duplex Ethernet on the M11xR1, I get 11.5MB/s ftp transfer rate from the E4200. The M11xR1 only has a 10/100 Ethernet.

One does wonder what the other 150Mbps of the WiFi bandwidth is doing during the transfer at 1 metre, as the M11xR1 HDD writes shouldn't be slowing it down. Maybe the M11xR1 original card is not the best.
What???... Why are you all looking at me like that...???... What???

note 1 - 59.3MB/second (~474Mbps) over 1GB Ethernet on fix cable LAN on same 700MB ISO file using Command Prompt binary ftp, where disk may have approx 60-70MB write speed (WD10EALX) on SATA 1.5GB interface, plus read and transfer overheads.

 

I just realized nobody answered to you, fella.
The answer is yes, you can do that.

 

How much of a range reduction and speed gain going from Intel 6200s to Killer 1102? I currently have an Intel 6250 installed. Wondering if moving to Killer 1102 will be beneficial.

 

if not broken I would suggest not trying to fix it. Too much of a crap shoot on wireless for some reason

 

Might be lesser range but the connection speed is much more stable.