Oct 1:
Never did find the HOWTO on installing a third antenna to get MIMO working on the netbook. Saw one jackass attached a massive 19dB antenna to the side of his 9″ netbook.
He was severely abused for this.
And he never got around to saying if it improved anything!
What a dork.
Anyway, I ordered an Intel 6205 mini PCIe card to pop in there.
This is a new half-height card, which means it is about the size of a stamp.
Anyway, it doesn’t fit! I think the pin count is wrong, and it needs to be a full-sized card in order for the screws to hold it in place!
Bugger!
But, wait!
While staying up far too late the other night, I learned more about the powers of the 6205 while looking for what I might like to upgrade the big laptop up to. Alas, all my hopes were dashed when I was sufficiently schooled in this 802.11n channel bonding stuff to realize that I should just be happy with what I’ve got, because what I’ve got only has two antennas, so I will never get at that lovely, lovely MIMO action. Not one to like throwing $17 out the window for nothing, I decided to upgrade the 6200 card in the lappy to the 6205. I can then take the freed up 6200 in to work with me and see about upgrading the lappy there to the yummy 802.11n numminess, even though my current connection is limited to 5.5MB on a 7MB link. Whatevs. :whistle:
So, I popped open the little compartment where the WiFi card lives on the home lappy and what did I see? A spare THIRD ANTENNA CABLE just sitting in there waiting to be hooked up to a MIMO card, like the 6300! All the docs say this lappy has only TWO antennas!! Suck it! Happies.
So, anyway, I still need to come up with a workable solution for the netbook, but it is working for now.
Addendum:
You guys may or may not remember that when I bought this laptop, I also bought the Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) adapter to stream the laptop sound and display to the TV. Well, I did.
It was something of a non-starter, though, as it didn’t handle video streaming very well.
Also, it wouldn’t stream DVDs (or Blu-Ray DVDs) due to DRM issues. What a shock!
Anyway, I packed the adapter away and haven’t thought of it until the other night when I found that the software has since gone from just out of beta to v3.13. MUCH has been improved from the reviews and press releases I have read. Streaming video issues are a thing of the past. DRM issues are as well. So, I will be digging through the layers of detritus in my office closet tomorrow after my doctor’s appointment to find my adapter. Once the software on that is updated, I’ll test it out on the TV and will let you know. If it works 80% as well as the hype says, it will be pretty cool!