Internal Dual-band WirelessNIC for Laptop?

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sdotbrucato

[H]ard|Gawd
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Has anyone had any luck swapping out the internal Wireless NIC on a laptop?

A friend recently bought an HP laptop with no ExpressCard slot and wants 5.0Ghz 802.11N. USB dongles are bulky and just not portable, so I was thinking of swapping the internal WirelessNIC, but don't know where to start looking or which cards to trust.
 
a lot of those are mini-pci cards (I think that's what they're called).

atleast in Dells, anyway.
 
j-sta said:
a lot of those are mini-pci cards (I think that's what they're called).

atleast in Dells, anyway.
Click to expand...

I've narrowed it down to being Mini-PCIe. But I still dont know whichone to get. I love the range of my Macbook, and I'm pretty sure it's an intel card, but Im not willing to take apart my macbook to find out what model it is. lol
 
I swapped the massively shitty Atheros b/g card in my Aspire One netbook with an Intel 5300 a/b/g/n miniPCI-e card. It was rather straight forward, but it depends heavily on the specific machine you are working on.

Good thing is the 5300's are on Ebay for dirt cheap.
 
criccio said:
I swapped the massively shitty Atheros b/g card in my Aspire One netbook with an Intel 5300 a/b/g/n miniPCI-e card. It was rather straight forward, but it depends heavily on the specific machine you are working on.

Good thing is the 5300's are on Ebay for dirt cheap.
Click to expand...

Whats performance like on those 5300s? Especially on the 5.0Ghz side?
 
Dunno, not even sure if it does 5GHz. I hate WiFi for file transfer anyway so I hook up an Ethernet cable if I need to move stuff.
 
criccio said:
Dunno, not even sure if it does 5GHz. I hate WiFi for file transfer anyway so I hook up an Ethernet cable if I need to move stuff.
Click to expand...

From what I've read they do 5Ghz, and I was looking at these, since i can get them for like $30, but before I commit I need stats!

Anyway you can test it out, or are you limited to 2.4Ghz? =(
 
Yea no N access points here, sorry. I just needed something to replace the awful Atheros chip.
 
criccio said:
Yea no N access points here, sorry. I just needed something to replace the awful Atheros chip.
Click to expand...

Okay fair enough, I take it it's reliable at G speeds?

The only requirements he has for the card is to be able to reliably stream HD rips from his server. He can almost do this on G, but not quite. I can do this on 5Ghz N without an issue.
 
Nothing is going to reliably stream HD rips. You might get away with 720p but forget about 1080p,

As per your original question, yes, it is a very stable card.
 
The Intel WiFi Link 5000 series cards are very good and support both 2.4ghz and 5ghz. The 5300 has 3T3R antennas and claims to support speeds up to 450Mbps while the 5100 model supports up to 300Mbps. Few routers support more than 300Mbps, so the 5300 is likely overkill.

I have a 5100 in my laptop, but my router is G only. It's very stable and has great range at 2.4ghz at least.

SuperBiiz.com has the 5100 for $22.99 + Shipping.
 
The 5000 series is gonna be your gold standard here. I have an Intel 5100 in my Asus g50v. It's a great card, 300mbps to my Linksys WRT610N. The difference between the 5100 and 5300 is 2 vs 3 antenna's. 5Ghz simply won't give you the range that 2.4 will, luckily there are simultaneous 2.4 and 5ghz routers (not all routers that have both frequencies will do a simultaneous connect on both)
 
Definitely grab the Intel WiFi Link 5300. I did quite a bit of research and found it to be one of the best internal cards. I just swapped one into my Dell Vostro and am very impressed with the 2.4Ghz performance. I can't comment on the 5Ghz performance first hand, but I can say that from what I have read it will perform very well!
 
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