Upgrading laptop wireless

[WildW]

I have an old laptop (Toshiba Portege A100 - Pentium M 1.4GHz, XP Pro) that only has an 802.11b wireless capability - mostly not a problem but it fails to connect to wireless points that use WPA. WEP has always been fine, but from what I can tell the ability to use WPA is a property of the wireless card itself, and there's no update I can find for the wireless card either.

I've had the laptop apart before when I changed the hard drive, so I've seen the mini-PCI card in there. . . I assume it's just a matter of swapping for a more capable wireless card and installing the drivers? Will the (internal to the laptop) antenna be a standard socket?

I do love this old beast - 4 years old now and still no other reason for me to upgrade it =)

 

[corkyg]

Better read this thread.

WiFi

 

[gcy]

I was able to replace my old Averatic 2200 with an intel pro wireless 802.11abg pci mini card from ebay. Had to download the driver from intel - driver works for XP and Win7 with no problem. There is also a new mini pci 802.11n card for about $26. I think I paid $15 for my used card.

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Better read this thread.

WiFi

I feel like that's more of a problem with newer notebooks and not so much of one when a wireless card was being offered as an upgrade (over no wireless card) instead of their being a wireless card by default.