I'd like to be able to connect my note-book computer to a better antenna than those built into it.<\/p>
I could drill a hole in the case, and mount an RP<\/abbr> SM<\/abbr>A jack there, connected to the internal Wi-Fi card. The patch cord that I would use fot this would cost me $20.50.<\/p> An alternative would be to get a new USB<\/abbr> or PCMCIA<\/abbr>[1]<\/span> Wi-Fi adapter with a built-in external antenna connector. Setting aside units that I fear would be even cheaper<\/em> than they are inexpensive<\/em>, it appears that an adapter with an antenna jack or jacks would cost at least $40, and then not support the forthcoming 802.11n standard<\/a>.<\/p> Thus, basically, if I bought one of these Wi-Fi adapters, then I'd be paying $20 or more to avoid drilling a hole in the case of my computer, and for the convenience of not having to open-up the case whenever I wanted to switch to-or-from the internal antenna that would be disconnected to enable the RP<\/abbr> SM<\/abbr>A jack. (A patch cord with bulkhead U.FL-R connector instead of an RP<\/abbr> SM<\/abbr>A jack would spare me that latter awkwardness, but I've not found such a cord.) [1]<\/span>I don't much like the idea of surrendering the PCMCIA<\/abbr> slot, as I only have one; but I have six USB<\/abbr> slots, and have never used more than five at one time.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I'd like to be able to connect my note-book computer to a better antenna than those built into it. I could drill a hole in the case, and mount an RP SMA jack there, connected to the internal Wi-Fi card. The patch cord that I would use fot this would cost me $20.50. An alternative […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,69,5,4],"tags":[68],"class_list":["post-926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electronics","category-information-technology","category-personal","category-public","tag-computers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/p>