Need help choosing a External usb wifi adapter

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aerostalgic

Honorable
Oct 7, 2012
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10,510
Earlier this week, I beleive my laptops internal wifi adapter died(seeing as how I can connect to the internet on any other device in my house minus my laptop), and I'm not really happy on the idea of bringing it into a tech shop just for this.

Asking because I had absolutely no idea until today that usb wifi adapters existed in the first place or the first thing about them, and on top of that probably need help choosing one.

Preferably cheap (25$ and under) and from amazon?(Have a few giftcards and discounts on hand).
 
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I would first search for instruction for your laptop on how to replace the internal wifi card. Many you can just remove a small panel on the back to get access. Of course there are some where it is a pain to disassmble. The wifi card though is almost always a separate board you can replace.

The reason to replace the internal card is mostly related to the antennas. The best usb devices have large antenna or are physically fairly large if they contain internal antenna. The little tiny USB device have tiny antenna and are easily blocked by the placement of the USB port. This is a trade off. The easy to transport and carry around device do not work as well as the ones with huge antenna

The internal antenna on a laptop are...
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bill001g

Titan
Aug 9, 2012
28,363
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I would first search for instruction for your laptop on how to replace the internal wifi card. Many you can just remove a small panel on the back to get access. Of course there are some where it is a pain to disassmble. The wifi card though is almost always a separate board you can replace.

The reason to replace the internal card is mostly related to the antennas. The best usb devices have large antenna or are physically fairly large if they contain internal antenna. The little tiny USB device have tiny antenna and are easily blocked by the placement of the USB port. This is a trade off. The easy to transport and carry around device do not work as well as the ones with huge antenna

The internal antenna on a laptop are behind the screen are are fairly large compared to a USB device so the internal cards tend to work better on a laptop.
 
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