PC Nextday Zoostorm 4-5701 17″ Laptop – Wireless problem
So I bought a 17″ Zoostorm laptop from PCNextday . It got 5 stars out of 5 from Computer Shopper and it worked out about £200 cheaper the a 17″ Dell laptop.
All was well, I was aware that they did have a bad reputation for customer service, but I thought I would risk it as the saving was too much.
The laptop came within 3 days of me ordering it. This was a surprise as they said that it can take up to take 3 weeks.
The laptop was working well, I was impressed with the screen (even though computer shopper said it was dull). However I was having a problem with the built in wireless card (Atheros). It was getting a very low signal even though I was sitting next to the wireless router. I first thought this was my router, so I asked someone else to test it and they reported the same problems. I then went and upgraded the software to the latest driver. The windows drivers are difficult to find so here is a good resource. But this had no effect. So after tearing my hair out I could not figure it out I emailed the technical support at pcnextday. They took a long time to respond, but their response was worth the wait. They basically said to check weather the wireless card was installed correctly and gave me these pictures :
So I unscrewed the laptop and checked it. I found out that the card was in the correct place, however the antenna was connected to the wrong point in the card. So I changed that and tested it. Unfortunately this did not work. As there were two wires that were black, I thought maybe the person who installed it made a mistake and attached the wrong wire. So I added the other wire and it worked. Now I have an excellent signal 
I hope this experience helps someone. I think pcnextday need to work on their quality control
I have installed Ubuntu 6.10 on the laptop. All of the things seem to work. I had to do some configuration to get the wireless card to work though, but that is another blog post.
Hamza
3 comments so far
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Hamza, this is fantastic, mine too was on lowest conector & could only get low signal strength, moved it to top as you describe & wow strength now excellent! Am bowing to you, thankyou for this post! I echo comments re pc next day service not that good but product pretty cool.
Thanks again,
John C.
Hi John,
I am glad that this post helped you and that I was not the only one unlucky customer
As they responded to me with those images, I assume that it must be a common fault.
Hamza
Hi Guys
You’re comments are very interesting. I however not had this problem. I also recieved the item after three days!! Im guessing they say 3 weeks to cover themselves!
I am extremely impressed with the brand. What do you think of the new fizzbook?