Decent laptop 289.99 for first 250 cust [CLOSED]

djrobmac

calibrax wrote:

I got the card and the antenna on eBay. The antenna was £9 (+£3.50 p&p) from "wireless4laptop" and the card was £26.49 (free p&p) from "oxford.bay".

I'll try and put a pic on here tonight if I get a chance.

Steve

Thanks for that, I have now bought the antenna from the same guy so I'd be very interested in seeing how you lay them and the reception results.

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread for a little while more :-)

Strange about the PC shop saying they wouldnt do it MyUserNamesTaken! Wonder why, those sorts of shops are more than keen to charge a fortune for a job primary school child could do (not that im saying that this is one of those jobs cause it could prove to be a tad bit tricky)

MyUserNamesTaken

If you knew the guy who runs the PC Shop, you'd understand why he said no. There's another bloke that works there that probably would have done it, but the bloke I spoke to doesn't seem to actually know that much about PCs. When it's obvious that I'm describing a software/hardware conflict (i.e. something I've installed is causing the machine to crash), he says it's preinstalled hardware and to return it to PC World. I told him it ran without problems before I installed anything, but it didn't seem to change his opinion. I even told him that now the extra ram's out, it doesn't randomly reboot anymore, but just freezes (only when using bittorrent, though). Still, he insists it's a preinstalled hardware problem. To me, it's blindingly obvious that the first problem was the ram/d-link wifi card, and now it's definitely down to software. I'm not getting serious windows errors now. I think a completely fresh install would sort everything out. One thing's for certain - it's not going back to PC World.

calibrax

Ok, I've installed my card & antenna. Here's the card installed (white thing, top and centre) and the antenna (wiry thing lying on the case) ready to install.



I tried opening up the case a bit more, undid a whole load of screws, but still couldn't open it completely. But I got enough space to push the wire in where i wanted it. "A" is the right antenna, I've put it in the space where the hard drive goes (I took the hard drive out first). When I put the hard drive back, the antenna sits on top of it. "B" is the miniPCI wireless network card, installed. "C" is the end of the antenna that connects to the card (I haven't connected it in this pic yet). At "D" you can see a little white wire - this is the left antenna wire, the end of which is pushed into the case so it's sitting just under the "D" on the pic. The thing with the sticker on just above the wire is the 256MB RAM which comes with the PC - I'm waiting for my extra 256MB to be delivered.



Put it all back together, and it seems to be working fine... although I can't actually test it until I change my wired broadband router over to my new wireless one, which I can't be bothered doing just now (had a busy day!). I'll do that tomorrow.

Steve

djrobmac

Well done for that 10/10 for effort.

Suprised you couldnt get the cover off! Did you take out the small silver screws under where the hard drive sits or the two screws on the side where the power cable plugs in? With all the screws out it comes off real easy!

The real test of course is yet to come....reception! Fingers crossed.

Let us know how you get on.

P.S How long did it take for your antenna to arrive from that seller?

amit_1

yes i managed to get the 6 screws open bought a new screw driver ans installed my ram very easy now i have 441 mb wirth of ram now all i need is 3 more of the same screws to buy any 1 no what type,size,name screws are as 3 of them are useless

calibrax

djrobmac wrote:

Well done for that 10/10 for effort.

Suprised you couldnt get the cover off! Did you take out the small silver screws under where the hard drive sits or the two screws on the side where the power cable plugs in? With all the screws out it comes off real easy!

The real test of course is yet to come....reception! Fingers crossed.

Let us know how you get on.

P.S How long did it take for your antenna to arrive from that seller?

I took out all the screws I could find but only one silver one to remove the hard drive, I couldn't see any other silver ones. Maybe I wasn't looking too hard!

Anyway, I was bored, so I decided to bite the bullet and install my wireless router tonight... it's a Linksys WRT54G, which is basically the same 4 port router that I already have (Linksys BEFRSR41), but with the addition of wireless. Installed it, sorted out my two desktop PCs (wired) with no trouble.

Then it was on to the laptop to set up for wireless. The laptop picked up the network straight away, although I did have a problem setting up WEP / WPA encryption. I'll have to read up on encryption over the weekend.



Although it says the network is unsecured, I have actually restricted access by giving the router my wireless network card's MAC address... so only my laptop can access the wireless network, and no-one else's machine can.



As you can see, the reception is excellent - I'm using the laptop in the room next door to where the router is, so I'm about 20 feet away through a wall, and the signal strength is at maximum. Not bad!

Regarding the antenna delivery - I ordered on Wednesday and it arrived this morning.

Steve

amit_1

did u get an internal crad thing or a external 1

calibrax

amit_1 wrote:

did u get an internal crad thing or a external 1

Internal - check out my earlier post with photos of it being installed.

Steve

MyUserNamesTaken

amit_1 wrote:

did u get an internal crad thing or a external 1

Amit, not being funny, mate, but I don't think you should attempt to install an internal card in your laptop. You'll have to take the laptop apart to install the antennae. If you're going to get a wifi card, go for an external one.


Incidentally, I have discovered the cause of my random freezes, which always happen when bittorrent's running. The wifi connection sometimes drops, due to not using any antennae right now, which causes bittorrent to freeze. When the antennae come, this problem will stop (i hope!). I'll get the ram swapped over at PC World on Sunday, and that wil sort out the dodgy stick of ram problem.

amit_1

MyUserNamesTaken wrote:

Amit, not being funny, mate, but I don't think you should attempt to install an internal card in your laptop. You'll have to take the laptop apart to install the antennae. If you're going to get a wifi card, go for an external one.


Incidentally, I have discovered the cause of my random freezes, which always happen when bittorrent's running. The wifi connection sometimes drops, due to not using any antennae right now, which causes bittorrent to freeze. When the antennae come, this problem will stop (i hope!).

thats ok i am am noway going to install 1 my self i will get a external 1 much better but dont need it at the moment laptop works much better with 441 mb ram