Alfa wireless adapter even worse than my laptop's atheros?

[prlol]

Hi, I bought an alfa awus036NH wifi adapter to work with my wireless n connection. I've heard a lot of praise about Alfa adapters. When I tried it, the signal strength is weaker than my laptops atheros AR9285. This always happens. I don't even use it as my atheros is still better. I'm very disappointed. I bought the awus036nh with the 5dbi antenna and also with a 7dbi square antenna. Neither of them do anything to improve my signal. I installed the drivers which came with the cd. I really hope it's some other problem like bad drivers because I can't believe that the adapter can be that bad. Can someone help me get the most out of this adapter?

 

[bill001g]

Signal strength means nothing. Its like the silly bar codes on cell phones. You cannot compare between brands since they use their own standards.

If you can you want to test transfer rates between a wireless device and wired device in your house. The N transfer should be faster even in cases where it actually does have less signal strength.

When you test you want to go into the router and set the support to N only, the card cannot use any of the advanced N feature when the router must also support older b and g at the same time.

This alfa card is getting a little old, not sure why they have not come out with models based on newer chipsets.