New poster here 🙂 First things first, thank you guys for all the pointers in this thread!
I went ahead and bought the 5350 wifi card from the Hong Kong ebay seller, and that came with 3 antennas (saw some piccies somewhere in the thread). Delivery to the UK took about a week.
Instead of going through the trouble of buying an extra antenna, I split the LCD open to see if I could fit an extra antenna in the back. Thing is, the antenna pads that came with the wifi card are about 1.5 times the size of the NC10 antennas. That could mean (sorry, no scientific study here) that the antennas that come with the 5350 are more sensitive than the original samsung ones. Original antennas are marked BA42-00217A WLAN_R400_A00 WDAN-M1WC1002-DF for the right one (green PCB, white cable) and BA42-00216A WLAN_L650_A00 81 EHD15 004 for the rleft one (yellow PCB, black cable). See here.
In the end, I replaced the two existing antenna and still found enough space to add the third one in too. I think the plastic of the back cover had three different spaces marked for sticking antennas in!
The new antenna cables are about 30cm longer than the original ones, but the 3 cables can be neatly coiled together in the empty space next to the wifi card.
I also swapped the HD for a 500GB one and am currently using g4u to clone the original disk. Not sure what windows will make of the new card yet! Having said that, I booted an ubuntu live pendrive and I can still see the same 10-11 hotspots around the block. If anything, I don’t think I’m worse off with the new antennas.
Steps (that I can remember):
* take the bottom cover off (15 screws??)
* swap the wifi card, leave the antennas unplugged
* unclip the silver hinge covers
* take the 4 rubber covers on at the corners of the LCD
* unscrew the 4 screws
* unscrew the LCD (2 screws at the top, 2×2 at the bottom)
* put something soft on top of the keyboard
* lay the LCD flat on the keyboard (there’s some sticky tape on the top, careful)
* remove the antennas (they are stuck to the back cover
* stick the new ones in, black left, 2 whites right (remove the sticky tape cover or won’t stick)
* get all the cables through the right hinge
* coil the cables, put some tape around them
* connect the cables (1 is black, 2 3 white)
* put everything back together (reverse steps)
Took me a good few hours that! 😉
I took piccies of the whole procedure, but a lot of them are on the blurry side, sorry about that!
Hope this helps!
John