G73SW Wifi Upgrade options..

[_Adrian_]

Recently my N71 had bit the dirt ( last 3 days of the warranty thank god ) and since ASUS couldn't fix it they replaced it with G73SW.

Its a pretty nice unit if you ask me ( Q2630, 8GB, 460M, BDRom ) i mean it looks like they went out of their way to hit every point on the ROG list... Beside the one crucial one I personally think its one of the important ones...
The WIFI !

This unit came with AR9285 card ( which I did find out that is an PCIe half length card ) however i does miss out on the Dual Band support which most routers these days fully support and is useful when transferring large files or in my case use my laptop to administer 4 servers over a secure wireless connection.

I would like to upgrade to a better WIFI card, as running wired in is not always the option as most of the network is optical.
What are my options here ??

Regards,
Adrian C.

[carulli]

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless-products/centrino-advanced-n-6230.html

I recently put that card in my g73jh, It is working great and has an internal bluetooth module. It is also dual band. If you want faster speeds the best option is the 6300 card from intel, however you will not benefit from any faster speeds unless you run a 3rd antenna.

I'm pretty sure these are compatible with the sw but I'm not 100% sure.

[_Adrian_]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I trolled eBay really quick and found quite a few of the 6230's on there at what looked like the $17-22 range.
I'm sure a lot of people will say ebay ... wtf ?

I been using ebay even for work and if some common sense is used good deals can be found since everything is made in china anyways, so why pay the shipping and customs plus markup when i can buy employee direct...

This Guy has sold 222 units to date and has a good record. Besides... im gonna use my wife's laptop to test it as well as I'm gonna order one for her K50 as well.

[BrodyBoy]

_Adrian_ wrote:
Thanks for the quick reply.

I trolled eBay really quick and found quite a few of the 6230's on there at what looked like the $17-22 range.
I'm sure a lot of people will say ebay ... wtf ?

I been using ebay even for work and if some common sense is used good deals can be found since everything is made in china anyways, so why pay the shipping and customs plus markup when i can buy employee direct...

This Guy has sold 222 units to date and has a good record. Besides... im gonna use my wife's laptop to test it as well as I'm gonna order one for her K50 as well.

There are a lot of fake Intel cards coming out of China....in fact, some say you should assume any unit bought from one of those sellers is a counterfeit product.

WLAN cards are one of the cheapest upgrades you can do on a laptop.....why not just pay a few bucks more and go legit? If you have some weird--a** driver issue or failure with the fake card, you'd probably end up buying a real one anyway.

There are other options besides the 6230, BTW. That's a good one if you want integrated BT, but there are other cards without BT, or even options with WIMAX (not that anybody ever uses that!).

[_Adrian_]

BrodyBoy wrote:
There are a lot of fake Intel cards coming out of China....in fact, some say you should assume any unit bought from one of those sellers is a counterfeit product.

WLAN cards are one of the cheapest upgrades you can do on a laptop.....why not just pay a few bucks more and go legit? If you have some weird--a** driver issue or failure with the fake card, you'd probably end up buying a real one anyway.

There are other options besides the 6230, BTW. That's a good one if you want integrated BT, but there are other cards without BT, or even options with WIMAX (not that anybody ever uses that!).

I use the BT a lot actually...
I have 2 BT to RS232 adapters that i use for some older switches in the data center.
Also, today I tried 90% of the local shops and Tigerdirect with no success.

The 6300 would be a great addition, but at what cost really ??
I would literally need to disassemble the whole laptop. I mean if i was going to swap out the RAM in the process to something like Corsair and install the 3rd antenna in the lid and route the wire along with the other 2 back to the wireless card. Downside is that i would have to use a BT dongle however i dont use it on a daily basis so it might be feasible option.

[BrodyBoy]

_Adrian_ wrote:
I use the BT a lot actually...
I have 2 BT to RS232 adapters that i use for some older switches in the data center.
Also, today I tried 90% of the local shops and Tigerdirect with no success.

Just finding a card, you mean? All the aftermarket options (including the 6230) are available on Amazon, and usually Newegg.

The 6300 would be a great addition, but at what cost really ??
I would literally need to disassemble the whole laptop. I mean if i was going to swap out the RAM in the process to something like Corsair and install the 3rd antenna in the lid and route the wire along with the other 2 back to the wireless card. Downside is that i would have to use a BT dongle however i dont use it on a daily basis so it might be feasible option.

You don't have to install a 3rd antennae for the 6300....it works just fine as a 300Mbps adapter with two antennas. In fact...if, like most people, you're not using a three-stream 450Mbps router, there's no point to installing the third antenna. You just attach the existing antennas to posts 1 & 2.

I wasn't suggesting that the 6300 (or any other card) is "better" or that's what you should get. I was simply pointing out that there are a number of options available, since only the 6230 was previously mentioned. The "best" card for you is the one that best matches your needs and your wireless network.

[Signal2Noise]

Amazon informed me they could no longer obtain the 6230 even though it was listed in stock. My order sat there for almost two weeks before they sent me an email about it. I ended up getting one thru eBay for cheaper and it arrived intact and looks legit. The important thing is it installed w/o issue and works great.

[_Adrian_]

Signal2Noise wrote:
Amazon informed me they could no longer obtain the 6230 even though it was listed in stock. My order sat there for almost two weeks before they sent me an email about it. I ended up getting one thru eBay for cheaper and it arrived intact and looks legit. The important thing is it installed w/o issue and works great.

And that's what im looking for.
Even at home I have 2 access points set up for optimal coverage and both are Dual Band Wireless N AP's

Right now i have 8 devices on the 2.4GHz band and nothing on the 5GHz.
I would at least like laptops to have the Dual Band option as i might add a third AP for the ICrap

[BrodyBoy]

Right now, Amazon has 14 buying sources for new 6230s. @Signal2Noise, it sounds like you must have just been really unlucky with the timing of your order. 😞

@Adrian: Regardless whether you opt for 2.4 or 5GHz, you should definitely notice a performance jump with the card upgrade. Though there are certainly owners who get good results with the Atheros cards, most who upgrade notice not just the higher speeds, but improved stability as well. If you give 5GHz a try, I'm curious to see how you like the results. I've tried running a 2nd 5GHz band a few times, both with my current dual-band equipment and a couple other routers/APs I've tried, but I was somewhat disappointed. In the end, I found it too finicky, so I still run everything on 2.4Ghz.

[_Adrian_]

Depends on your setup really...

My AP's are on a separate VLAN and switch as well that is tied directly into my pFsense HP DL360 G4( Dual Xeon 3.6GHz Duo Core w/8GB and 2x 72GB in Raid1 )

The other 2 servers are TWO DL580 G4's ( QUAD 3.4GHz Duo Core Xeon w/32GB DDR2 and 2x 72GB 15K SAS Drives )
Both servers are running Win 2K8 Datacenter x64

SAN is an MSA1500cs with 2x MS20 Drive Shelf, each loaded with 12x 1TB SATA 3G Drives - RAID5


Each Server has a 2GB HBA card that is tie to 2 SAN Switches ( Redundancy is the Game )
Might be adding a MSL6000 Tape backup to the mix for automated backup of data in the array.

Half of Array 2 ( LUN 4 ) is music, movies and backups from the laptops..