Best Mini PCI card for stability/range?

I have an older laptop that's used for a remote desktop viewer setup.

It works well, but the building has tons of 2.4ghz signals bouncing around.

The laptop is ~100ft away from the router, and drops signal regularly. My other laptop with an intel 6300 works perfectly.
Did I mention that there are a lot of other 2.4ghz signals?


I've been looking at the intel 2200bg, atheros AR5008, and the broadcom 300m..

What's the best mini PCI(Not pci-e) card for signal strength/stability? I don't need N speeds, B/G will work fine.

 

Definitely not an Intel - 2200bg is a piece of cheese. There is even a huge thread on it in this sub-forum.
Both Atheros' and Broadcom's card of that day were pretty good although you are not very particular about the Broadcom one - what exact card are you thinking about?

Atheros AR 5008 would be a good choice nonetheless.

 

This is the broadcom card I'm talking about
New Broadcom 300M 802 11n BCM43222 WLAN Card for Panasonic Toughbook CF28 CF29 | eBay


This is the atheros card
http://www.ebay.com/itm/150884803520?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649


Do you have any recommendations? Most of them are <$10 now...

 

I'd go for the Atheros.

 

What kind of antenna connectors? Most likely u.fl but some older laptops have been known to not cheap out by choosing a lower loss and durable connector such as mmcx. (u.fl is <50 cycles with tooling, by hand lucky to last a dozen before it craps on the signal)

If you only have 2 antennas look for atheros 9220 chipset cards (not 9280 == express) as its newer and in my experience better than 5008.

How much space is available for the card? regular slot or some breathing room? There are many router-oriented higher power mini pci cards, most of them are just starting to change over to minicard.

In an ideal case I would say something like this is one of the nicest cards, but it is extra long and uses mmcx.

 

2 antennas, maybe 3 on a different laptop.

They use the 'standard' wifi antenna connector.

The card has it's own door on the bottom, but IDK if I would need that much power....


My intel 6300 can maintain a connection flawlessly.

 

Have you ever considered a usb wifi adapter? You can get knock off usb adapters as cheap as $10 on ebay, or a high powered Alfa adapter for $20. I run a 1mW Alfa high powered usb adapter on my laptop, I use a short usb cable, and have it velcroed to the top of my monitor, since I leave it 'installed' 24/7 and use my latop in my lap and don't wanna break it off in the usb port.


edit: the reason I recommend a USB adapter, is the fact that many laptops whitelist certain wifi adapters. What is your laptop? You need to look into that, because MANY laptops will only accept 1-3 different specific adapters.

 

There are 2 laptops that I'm looking for cards for...

One is a POS gateway 14in(gl40 chipset) the other is a alienware m3200.

A USB adapter is not an option...

 

I use this one (Atheros-chipped) in both my A31p and T43p and love it dearly:

TP Link 300 Mbps Wireless N Mini PCI Adapter | eBay

(Not affiliated with the seller in any way, proceed at your own risk.)

Do bear in mind that it's 2.4GHz only...so if you *really need* 5GHz band, a Broadcom one will serve you better.

 

The problem here is we have no idea what kinda of laptop the OP is talking to know what kinda card will fit their need to start with. So we need a make/model laptop to digest over first. Then next the options will be known what works and what doesn't. Just throwing out the problem wifi and no specs tends to lead to no solution to start with and if solution a confusing arrays of wifi that might work and some that might not work causing wasted money to be tossed away.

 

One will be for a genaric gateway 14in lapotop, single core, GL40 chipset, etc, IDK the model number.

The other is for my Alienware M3200.