Signal Dropout with Wireless Card

[Mempho]

My laptop is a Dell Lat D600 and it does not have an internal wireless card. Rather, I have a Linksys card that goes in the slot. I have a problem, however. Every now and then (at least 2-5 times every 5 hours) my card loses its connection with the hub. The quickest way to fix this is to pull the card out and slide it back in quickly. This, of course, can be quite an annoyance playing online poker (especially when I'm playing several tables). This delay, however is quite annoying and has cost me two pots (one flopped set and one flopped 2 pair). It also causes me to "get behind" during multitabling and make several really quick decisions (which sometimes causes me to make an error).

Is there any way to fix this "signal dropout?"

[Mr Gee]

Sounds like your dropouts could be due to interference. See the text below which I copied from an online support forum:

Symptoms that may result from interference include slow connectivity, link instability with frequent disconnections and a long time to associate. Check the Link Quality indicator on the utility: if it is poor or keeps jumping up and down, it could be due to interference. Interference may be caused by other WLANs in the viscinity, and also such devices as baby monitors, some cordless phones -those operating in the same frequency range as 802.11g/b products (2.4Ghz)-, and Bluetooth devices. In most cases, such issues may be resolved by experimenting with channel numbers on the router, and see which one works best there are 13 available channels in the UK, and an interfering device is unlikely to affect them all at once. In case several Wireless LANs are present in the same environment, channels should be set as far apart as possible, given that out of the 13 channels, 3 do not overlap: they are 1, 6 and 11 -so 2, 7, 12 and 3, 8, 13 will also be optimal combinations-.

[Mempho]

Well, I should probably be a little more specific. When I take my computer to work, I work with people whose laptops have Centrino internal wireless packages and they don't experience a dropout ever. Yet, myself and others with the external Linksys cards experience dropouts from time to time. Does that make any sense?

[tinga81]

there may be a loose connection between the laptop and the wireless card that could be causing the 'connection loss' between you and the wireless connection point. make sure that thing is in there tight.