How add external wifi antena to laptop?

The Thinkpads generally have very good reception with built in wireless, check it out first.

If not, you will want an external USB or ethernet client adapter. Search newegg for client under wireless or USB under wireless and follow the reviews.

But try your R61 first. Built in is so convenient.

Higher? Why? What are you trying to connect to? What makes you think height will make any difference?

There are some ideas on how to butcher your laptop and add external antennas at:

In general, they will require some drilling or modifications that will destroy your warranty. I would not recommend doing this on a new laptop.

A generally better idea is to add a wireless USB, PCMCIA, CardBUS, PCI-Expresso, or Express Card to your laptop. Some of these include external antenna connectors. For example:

The USB device would be attached to your favorite style antenna, with a 16ft USB cable between the laptop and the radio.

If you're thinking of using an omnidirectional antenna on a stick, that works. I've seen it used at the local college. It has the advantage of being fairly small when collapsed. However, if you know the location of the campus access points, a directional panel antenna offers more gain, generally less critical positioning, and some interference reduction. Think about carrying a small 8dBi panel, patch, biquad, or loop antenna instead of an omni. Height is good, but gain and directionality are much better.

Ok will chk the built in first and see what happens.

the R61i should be delivered this afternoon

I'm abt 1000 feet away from a truck stop that has free wifi

Great!! That should work above!!

Question tho..... what abt using a USB device that is also its own antenna and just putting THAT up high?

Course it means the signal is decoded first and must travel down some length of ire....where as your solution above allows the antenna and decoding circuit to be separate.

Also..... would PCMCIA adapter be better than say USB based ones?

Ok will check into it..... but have any suggestions?

Ummm.... did you get permission from the truck stop to use their internet connection?

It's effectively the same thing, except that you don't get a choice of antenna when the radio and antenna are one assembly. If you need a bigger (or smaller) antenna for some reason, you get to replace both. Also, you'll find the pricing of such devices rather odd. Some conglomerations cost more than the sum of the components. There is one advantage in that the assembly is probably more waterproof than a do it thyself system.

Also note that you're limited to about 16ft of USB cable. If you want to go farther, you should probably consider using PoE (power over ethernet) which a different and more complexicated animal. Basically, you would need an "ethernet wireless bridge" or "ethernet client adapter". There's a partial list of such devices at:

Not all of those listed will work, so please be careful before spending money.

The losses in the coax cable are substantial. This is why I suggested a seperate USB device... to minimize the coax cable length.

I really don't want to get into a long winded article on PCMCIA versus USB. In your specific application, you need to get the radio part away from the laptop. USB does that. PCMCIA does not. However, if the distance between the antenna is fairly short (i.e. < 10ft), either will work.

Note that the USB adapter I suggested has an external antenna. USB adapters with internal antennas tend to be rather small and therefore with very low gain antennas. You won't get much range out of them, but you can place them "up high".

Personally, I prefer the "ethernet wireless bridge" and PoE solution, but it's also the biggest, most expensive, ugliest, and most complex solution.

Nope. I explain how things work. You do your own shopping.