Wireless adapter problems

[nic2deep]

Alright I?m looking for some assistance again. My wife is in Spain and I am in the US. She is over there studying for 2.5 months and lives with a host mother. The host mother has a condo on the 4th floor of a 6-7 floor building. The room my wife is staying at is on the backside of the condo and has a pretty good view of the surrounding buildings. Anyway, her host mother doesn?t have internet access and my wife needs to access it for several reasons including calling me. I?ve been paying about .30 cents a min and can call free over the net. When I was visiting her a couple of days ago I brought my laptop over for her to use during her trip. I had a pcmcia wireless 802.11b card in it. Just for kicks I started holding the laptop out the window and to my surprise I was able to get a weak signal. So I went down to the store and bought a 9 meter usb cord and a BELKIN F5D7050 Wireless 802.11g USB Network Adapter. I didn?t have time to test it myself, but when my wife hooked it up and draped it out the window she gets connected but her signal is still very weak and gets disconnected all the time. I really need to get this working so I?m not spending 50$ a day to call her. I was wondering if any one knew the best wireless adapter to get that has the best reception? I saw several of the pringle can antennas, but I would like to buy something that looks a little nicer. Also I don?t know much about the 802.11 antennas or the difference between that and how we have it setup now and was hoping someone could tell me? Thanks

 

[nic2deep]

bump.

 

[SaintTigurius]

i dont think is is 100% correct.

but in spain i think they use omnifi and here in north america we use Wifi...

USB wireless is not a good choice.

i would go with something like a dwl-g810. this is what you could do. You pluge it in to the NIC card on the pc. so now u can move the wireless client anywhere... and u can replace the antenna for it.. this would give here more fexablilty to steal singal..

but i am not sure about the omnifi in europ and wifi in america different.

 

[nic2deep]

I don't know if matters or not, but I bought the belkin usb adapter at a store in Madrid and I'm able to get it working. It just cuts in and out all the time completely dropping the signal. My friend recommended that I buy a can of Pringles and try to make an antenna null. The problem is, 1) i don't know if it would even work, because I a novice with wireless technology and 2) She is in Spain, so I can't make it, ship it to her, and hope it works. I would rather buy some kind of powerful wireless antenna/adapter, or modify the existing adapter. Also I don't know much about the antennas and how they work. If someone could tell me about it or knows of any good sites that explain it let me know. I haven?t run across a problem that some genius in Anandtech hasn't known the fix for. Many Thanks