[JStergis]

Hey, All

This place has some really neat looking u.fl wi-fi antennas for 10 bucks that get a 3 dbi gain. I'd like to order some in my quest to get really good wireless my Thinkpad which originally didn't have any internal wi-fi.

Anyone ever oder from them before? Does the site look legit to you?

http://www.oxfordtec.com/us/

Thanks,

Joe



BTW, I've got a stable Realtek minipci wifi card in my Thinkpad with a random u.fl antenna out of an iptv box. The card is fine, but the antenna is pretty lousy. It's pretty big, just barely fitting in the PCMCIA slot, and gets bad range even when held in the air completely out of the laptop.

[JohnWill]

3db is not exactly a huge gain, the standard antenna supplied with most WiFi equipment is 2db. I'd look for one of the 7db antennas if you want to actually notice the difference.

[JStergis]

Originally Posted by JohnWill

3db is not exactly a huge gain, the standard antenna supplied with most WiFi equipment is 2db. I'd look for one of the 7db antennas if you want to actually notice the difference.

Okay, I suppose I should try to find a very small u.fl 7db antenna now. Thanks.

I think the antenna in it is 2 db. It comes close to the power of normal laptops as far as range, but it isn't quite there. I'd like to get at least as good as the average laptop, preferably a bit more. Plus, I wouldn't mind having my PCMCIA slot back. I put the antenna there because it's too big to fit anywhere else.

[JStergis]

Okay, realizing my current internal antenna is 1db and that I couldn't find a better small antenna than those ones at oxford, I ordered it (well, the longer one). I will put it up in the screen somehow and see what it does. I'm guessing it'll be here Monday, because it arrived about 50 mi. south of me today.

Comparing mine side-by-side to a normal 2db HP laptop today, I realized that mine is significantly weaker. Where the normal laptop still had 3 bars, I was barely holding one. I hope that this antenna improves it at least so I could use the laptop in the yard with reasonable signal strength this summer. I shall see Monday and post back.