Benefit of external antenna?

I have an Acer Aspire 3004 and live in a neighborhood that I suspect has some wifi but I get nothing using the built-in wifi antenna. I've read about modding a laptop to use an external antenna but would like to know what the practical benefit of doing so would be. Would there be a potentially huge difference, maybe even picking up signals never before seen or would it not make a big difference.
Thanks.

 

Connecting to networks with out permission is a form of theft in most all states. So their is no need to modify your setup. If you want internet service pay for it, don't steal it from your neighbors.

 

I second the motion - would you want someone mooching off of you?

 

I aree with the previous two people.

However, I did play with using a grid antenna to pick up our wireless broadcast from our university. It worked okay, but we weren't able to get a good LOS to the broadcast location as we had to point through a window and got a lot of interference.

We also tried another unit (forgot what it was called) that had an antenna that looked kind of like a long white coffee can. It worked as well. Again though, it could be considered stealing.

 

have not seen any real benefit in doing this, even with hotspots where signals are free (&strong) to use. Most of the mods i've seen are pretty much pre-historic, wifi signals have come a long way along with laptop built.in devices

i would either invest in a pcmcia wifi card to see if the signal acceptance can be any better or upgrade ur internal module to a stronger (?) one

cheers ...