Need to boost my Laptop Wifi Range... how?

Morning all.

I need a device to boost my wifi range on the laptop. It has an internal g/n(draft) card... it does pretty well in most instances. But, since I am a truck driver, a lot of times I find myself parked JUST BARELY out of range. I mean, I can see the signal... but it is very poor, and not steady or continuous at all times.

A common scenario is that I am parked at a Truck Stop that offers free wifi, but I am 80 ft from the store, or parked just around a corner or blocked off from the signal by 2-3 rows of parked trucks.

I saw a link for something that looked like a telescope, I think it was called "Cantena Antenna" or something like that. That is def in my price range (I think it was $50 or less) but I was wondering how difficult it would be to setup on a nightly basis and how large the thing was. If I could throw it in back of my truck during the day, and just extend the legs at night and hook it up in a jiffy... that might be right up my ally. But I'm not interested in anything thats going to take 2 hours to position just right or any home made devices that I'll have to build myself or takes hours to assemble or disassemble.

Thx for any advice!

 

You can get a cheap booster which will amplify the signal.Most of those telescopic amplifiers need antenna based cards.

 

Any recommendations about what Brand and where to buy?

 

Get Hawking technology device.

http://www.hawkingtech.com/

 

Or try something like the wi-fire

http://www.hfield.com/the-wi-fire/

 

have you considered a high speed internet card?

as long as theres cell phone reception youll have high speed internet wherever you go. of course it costs a decent amount, but you wont have to screw with it......too much

 

Something like THIS?

or THIS?

As the poster above me, you may want to contact your Cellular provider and look into an Aircard. It's usually $59/month, but wherever you get cellphone signal, you can get a pretty good speed broadband connection.

 

Thanks for all the replies.. found some good items online for extending wifi range. But another question I have is..

Is an Aircard faster then 3G reception on a cell phone? I discovered I can share my Internet connection from my cell phone to my laptop via Internet Sharing and USB Cable. My speeds range from 500kbps to 1.5Mbps when in a 3G area, which is about 35-40% of the time in my line of work. Otherwise, I'm on EDGE speed which is significantly under 500kbps most of the time. (Probably somewhere between 150-300) -- My provider is AT&T.

The reason I'm interested in a Wifi extender is two fold:
1. When I'm in no-coverage / EDGE / or low-speed 3G area, I will have a better chance of picking up a wifi access point.
2. Even when I'm in a high speed 3G area, I am still better off using Wifi because it's faster and an extender will give me better access to "poor signals".

 

The WiFi connection will certainly be faster than 3G (laptop - router connection), but the bottle neck is the ISP bandwidth, which in most cases (e.g. Starbucks), will be less than 3G.

 

I travel a lot and use a Wi-Fire from hField Technologies. Really enhances hotel wi-fi and can usually find other open Wi-Fi access points. Also, can connect outdoors my home and office where I couldn't before. I assume you'd get the same kind of benefits at truck stops as well.