[ale] OT: wireless card reception strength

[John Wells]

Guys,

I finally sold my wife's eMac on eBay, and purchased her a new HP Pavillion Media Center PC. Nice specs for the price, and everything looks good so far (except for HP's Vista install...I was hoping to evaluate Vista but HP has installed so much crap it's hard to separate the OS from the add-ons).

Anyway, the only problem I'm having so far is wireless strength. The PC came with an integrated 802.11G card...but it's listed as a USB card under windows, so I assume it's not PCI (although it's mounted internally on the box).

The card has a small coaxial cable mount on the back (about half the size of a tv cable), and the PC included a 3" inch antenna with stand that connects to the card by a 3' coaxial cable.

Problem is, where with the eMac I'd get very strong signal strength from my WRT54G, and also a pretty good read on the neighbors networks...this card/antenna combo is barely picking up my network. I can attached to it, but only at 1.0 Mbps at best.

So, question is, what would your guess be as the culprit? Card? Driver? Antenna? If antenna, can you recommend any ways to replace it with a homemade antenna, or, can you recommend an off-the-shelf version?

I'm going to load Ubuntu on it tonight and eliminate the driver question (hopefully).

Thanks guys!
John