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I have an old Acer Aspire V7 for some eight years now and I am looking to replace a few of its components to give it a couple more years of lifetime.

One of its parts that always sucked is the network card: no matter how close I am to the router, its performance will always be abismal, often losing connection while being right next from it. Given that Acer seems to have a very bad track record on their notebook cards, I had always thought it would be a no-brainer to replace it.

Going out to find a replacement part, I've come across a store where I engaged in a discussion with their technician, who pointed out the solution is not so simple as swapping the card. He asked me to come back with the notebook for an assessment.

Now he has pointed out to some causes that seems reasonable to me, but I'm not sure if he's being completely honest or taking advantage to dump a service comission onto me if I hand over my notebook for repair.

So I'd like to ask you guys what should I take into consideration about replacing this card, given some of the points I've sorted out from my own research, as well as what was mentioned in my discussion with this technician:

  • The original Acer card, being an old one, is 802.11a/b/g/n compatible. Wikipedia points out that new versions of the Wi-Fi protocol are backwards compatible, such as the current 802.11ax. Let's assume I have a router that emits signals on all three frequencies (2.4, 5 and 6 GHz), could I attach a modern network card without running into hardware incompatibility on my end?
  • The technician mentioned that it could be a problem with the notebook's antenna, not the card. How am I able to verify this by myself?
  • The technician also mentioned that even if I swap the card, I should be aware of ones that are compatible with the notebook's BIOS. Is that correct? If so, how can I verify the compatibility of a model with my old notebook's BIOS? Given that I use Linux as a daily driver, do I need to be aware of the need of a specific driver to be able to use it? (note: the connectivity problem has always been OS-agnostic, I'd say worse on Windows than on Linux to be fair)

BTW, the card currently sitting on my notebook is this one:

enter image description here

Also, doing some search on the internet, someone suggested to use ping 127.0.0.1 to check if the problem lies with the computer accessing the card. I've ran it for some 15 iterations and I got a response time average of 0.12 ms with 0% packet loss, in case this is relevant to the question.

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  • Unfortunately - if there's a whitelist for your brand/model - its specific models and firmware. Verifying a bad antenna yourself is impossible without insanely complex tools and skills, and I think that's a mini PCIe card, and modern cards are m.2, tho there's passive adaptors between them
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Commented Dec 4, 2021 at 0:34

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The technician mentioned that it could be a problem with the notebook's antenna, not the card. How am I able to verify this by myself?

I have replaced wireless cards on my machines. The only way you can tell is to open the laptop and verify the connections on the card by comparing to the Hardware Maintenance Manual, and that the connections are secure.

Otherwise (8 years old), disable it and try a good quality USB Wireless Card. See how it performs with respect to speed.

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