upgrade wi fi card on a old laptop

i have this really old laptop (1 gb ram dual core and a broken wifi card) that i want to give to my gramps (mail check, light browse and the ocational skype call with their great grandsons) i already swap the ram for a 4gb one i changed the hdd for a 240 ssd i had rolling around for a couple of years but the wi-fi card it's damaged or is utterly crap its a RTL8723BE and i want to change it what could be the best option? he lives with one of his daughters and she have AC capable router is there any chance that i could update the card to an AC capable one? thanks!

 

Yes, in theory there is as long as he buys an Intel 7260 in - I assume that's what you have - mini PCI Express format.

 

koneko22,I have an Intel AC-7260 mini pcie wireless card I no longer need.

If you are in the USA lower 48 I'll send it to you free for your gramps.

Send me a PM if interested.

 

Wifi cards tend to be whitelisted in the bios,check the manual for this laptop and what options they had for it and then its a sure thing.. better is use a usb wifi card, I was stuck on N- speed and then got Linksys WUSB6300 AC1200 dual band, now I connect at 433 Mb/s.. $15-19.00 then your in like flint...You need an AC router and supporting ethernet carrier--like cable to get fast downloads,,I'm using Tp-link AC2600 got on sale an newegg with 3 year warranty,, brand new.. Oh almost forgot look for Qualcomm chipset they are tops,,I have all qualcomm,,,

 

Very few vendors whitelisted WLAN cards in the past to begin with, it was mostly limited to IBM/Lenovo & HP; nowadays nobody does - only WWAN cards are whitelisted, again by greedy HP & Lenovo.

 

I too would like to see whitelisting vanished,, yet the bios except in certain models is crippled and need a mod, which I dont like doing to get to the switches that are hidden, You forgot Dell in whitelisting..

 

Dell does not I have replaced cards in quite a few ranging from Inspirons and Latitudes to Precisions and XPS infact they never even voided warranty for replacing anything that can be changed including Wi-Fi cards. They even sent me a new hdd in a repair unit with my ssd packaged separately because that was supposed to be factory default and said it was fine if I changed the Wi-Fi card.

 

Then they changed there policy...

 

Eons ago!