Can someone recommend me a wireless card I can buy to replace my Intel Centrino Wireless - N 1030? It only shows 2.4Ghz bandwidth in device manager and gives me half or usually less than half of my wired connection speed, around 30 to 50Mbps. Whereas if I connect the laptop with the ethernet cable, I'll get my full speed of over 100Mbps. My phone makes use of 5Ghz bandwidth and gives me the same 100Mbps wi-fi speed as my Vostro does when using ethernet.
I've downloaded the latest driver for the N 1030 direct from Intel but it made no difference. Unless anyone knows of a way to increase my wireless speed using the N 1030, is there a specific card I could buy that fits inside the Vostro that uses 5Ghz? Also, are those wireless USB adapters any good?
Yes, those two wires are the antennae cables. Be forewarned that it can be very fiddly to plug them in. A pair of small pliars can help.
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The 7260HMW is the card you need. I don't know if the dual band antennae are designed different to work properly on both frequency bands but the newer card should perform better, even on 2.4GHz. I would also note that I had driver problems when I tried updating an Intel WiFi card a few years ago. The generic Intel WiFi driver may still think it is the old card which has developed problems. Sorting this out may be more difficult than swapping the card and may need a driver uninstallation and clean-up before putting the new card in. Thanks John and thanks for the forewarnings. The HMW cards on my ebay link are all from china.
I don't mind waiting longer to receive one as it always takes a couple of weeks from there, but anything from china is usually cheap and makes me wonder if they're genuine and will work properly? I'm assuming you're referring to this one for example: It's not expensive though and I don't mind giving it a shot if you think so. Regarding the driver, on your advice, yes, I'll do a complete uninstall of the N 1030 drivers first. This driver should work though I presume or have I selected the wrong one? I would suggest you get the AC WiFi card so that you have the option to get an AC router even if the Virgin superhub doesn't oblige. I've got the original Virgin superhub but only as a cable modem and have never used its WiFi to find out how bad it is because I already had a better router when the superhub was installed. I recently bought a because my previous Asus RT-N66U was starting to drop WiFi connections.
A further considering in my case is that the superhub and my main router are in different rooms and are connected by a network cable (put in many years ago before WiFi was commonplace - I'm waiting to see how the nominally 100Mb/s cable handles the 150Mb/s that Virgin promises I will get soon).