P
Paul
With respect to range, make sure you've seated the antenna cables
properly on the two connectors. I've read that those connectors
can get damaged, if you're rough with them. That is about all I
can suggest with respect to range improvement. If the coax was
damaged (cable severely pinched, antenna element on the end
ripped off), that would affect your range.
If someone has taken the laptop all apart at some point,
they may have put the coax cables back in the wrong position.
The antenna on the end of the coax, has to sit in an "aperture"
in the case, so the RF can escape. If the antenna was placed
next to something that blocks the signal, you'd lose some
range that way.
You'd have to use Google, and find some reviews for that
particular Wifi module, to see if range problems
exist on all of them or not. In Wifi modules in the
$25 range, there can be a wide variation in output
power level, from one chip to the next. The best
designs, will use a separate RF chip. You can't always
tell what you're getting, because of the shield over
the RF emitting section. The shield is there, to
prevent the Wifi module from crashing the
digital logic next to it (susceptibility).
The only place signal should be emitted, is
up near the antenna end.
*******
As far as I know, the opening in the bottom of your computer,
has one RAM slot and one Wifi slot. The Wifi card should have
two coax connectors. A RAM SODIMM, would have a number of
identical chips on it. It could be, you're using
just the memory soldered to the motherboard, and no
optional SODIMM was plugged into the RAM socket.
mobo_RAM + SODIMM_RAM = total_RAM
Some laptop motherboards have only a soldered bank of RAM chips.
Some have one SODIMM slot and no mobo RAM. Or you can have
soldered RAM plus one slot. Or you can have two SODIMM slots.
So that's at least four different ways they can do the RAM.
And in the case of two SODIMM slots, some motherboards
are single channel, and some support dual channel. The
advantage of a single channel design, for the manufacturer,
is the design saves a bit of power. And power means everything
when it comes to battery life. I think my laptop is single
channel. I get no bandwidth boost, from using two SODIMMs,
I just get the extra memory.
HTH,
Paul