strength of 802.11b built in vs pcmcia

[andrewjm]

what is the difference in strength between 802.11b when it is built into a laptop vs having it in a pcmcia card with its own antenna? where exactly is the antenna on a built in wifi connection?

 

[sk560]

the antenna of the built-in wifi is normally on the both sides on the screen.

if both pcmcia and built-in wifi (mini pci or Airport).. have the same quality... i would say built-in wifi has better reception... since the antenna is on top while the pcmcia is usually on the bottom.

there is a way to rate the reception strength of a wifi card... can't remeber what's that now

 

[Shalmanese]

But its harder to get an external antenna for built-in ones. From experimentation, my built in IBM gets maybe ~ 20M more range than a PCMCIA one.

 

[jschuk]

I have seen better performance from the built-in antennas. I don't know how built-in would compare to a PCMCIA card with an external antenna (available on some cards).