OT: Improving laptop wifi reception

[Alan Cox]

> I don't place a lot of faith in the signal metering.

Power has little to do with signal quality. It might make it go a bit
further, it might win one or two more 'shouting louder than the others'
contests but chances are it won't make any big difference. Ten times the
power might get you a bit further, but not a vast amount with a simple
antenna, and generally that is all that is permissible for transmit on
licence exempt devices

It's all about reception antenna quality, hardware quality and local noise
levels. Remember this is a spread spectrum signal with low power levels
and that power spread thinly across a lot of frequencies.