I have recently aquired a new Dell Inspiron 5150 laptop. I have purchased a netgear wg511 pcmcia wifi card. It was all I could afford at the moment. I have the laptop dual booting xp pro and fedora core 3. I have no complaints about the setup except for the wifi range.

I pick up wifi APs all over. My gf recently moved into a house purchased by a mutual friend. While I was over there painting last night I took a break and took out the laptop. I fired up kismet and found 5 unprotected WAPs with links around 50%. (they all had default SSIDs, even the admin pwds had not been changed.) These are townhomes and are very close to each other. I took my pocketpc and found approximately where they were.

The are all right near her house. I spoke with one neighbor and asked them if they had a wifi connection and he confirmed that he did. I asked him if it was ok if I used his connection since it was so close and I told him I would only use it for surfing and email and such. Since I will only be there on the weekend, I didn't want to get a broadband internet conenction for myself. I refuse to go back to dial up... I'd rather just go home to use my own connection. I won't bog down his line and use too much bandwidth. (its a cable connection 3mbps down 384kbps up) However, the siginal goes in and out and am looking for a way to boost the connection. I know when certain cards you can attach external antennas... but with this one, you can't. Well, without taking it apart and soldering a N connector. I don't want to tear it apart because its still under warranty.

I was wondering if anyone has seen anything that attaches to the end of a card that would increase the signal? I would think that anything attached would have to connect to the current antenna? Or, would the signal "jump" from one to another?

The other thing I was thinking about doing is buying an wifi range extender.
http://www.linksys.com/expand/

The only thing I don't like about that range extender is that it is only compatible with linksys products. I know he has a linksys, but what if I want to use it at a different location that doesn't use a linksys? Then I'm screwed... Not just that, but it has a negative effect on the speed on the "other side" of the extender.... I don't want to screw up anyones speeds... (not like they'll be using 54mbps on the internet...)

Any opinions? What would you do? Just get the extender? Or, just save and get a better card that I can attach an external antenna?

Oooh! I just had another idea. Maybe I can just make my own "wifi extender"? Two wifi cards and a small shuttle PC. Expensive, but it would work anywhere and with any APs... hmmm...

http://www.calibex.com/serv/calibex1...ttle+barebones

I have plenty of extra hardware to go inside... memory, hds, cdrom, etc.
Hmm.. this could turn out to be an interesting project. And everyone keeps asking me what I want for x-mas... muhahaha muhahaha