Will madwifi improve my (working) wifi signal?

[mrs. respect]

I hope this isn't a silly question, but...

After a successful (and easy!) install of 7.10 on my Macbook (older CoreDuo), my wireless signal seems a little weak. The four-bar graph in my tray shows only two bars, sometimes even one, and of course I'd like to see all four colored in :) I know I should be grateful that wireless worked "out of the box," but it's beginning to bother me. I tried using madwifi according to the Macbook entry in Ubuntu Wiki, but that seemed to break my wireless completely.

So my question is this: would a "correct" install of madwifi improve my wifi signal at all? If so, what's the best method? Should I just get over it and be happy wifi is working at all? :p

Your help is appreciated.

[tubasoldier]

I'm using madwifi, although not on a macbook. I'm roughly 10ft away from my router right now and only have 3 bars using network manager.
Using the less popular previous wireless connection tools, wifi-radar and wireless assistant (these both need admin privledges to connect to other wireless networks., I'm able to get all four bars.

[russo.mic]

I wouldn't really watch the "Bars" as an accurate representation of the quality of your signal.
try typing iwconfig as a better numerical representation of this. To put my opinion it, if your wireless is working and fulfilling the needs you have of it, I wouldn't see much point to breaking your wireless. Besides, as long as your above %15 or so your won't see much of a speed increase.

Good Luck!

Russo

[cyberdork33]

I wouldn't really watch the "Bars" as an accurate representation of the quality of your signal.
try typing iwconfig as a better numerical representation of this. To put my opinion it, if your wireless is working and fulfilling the needs you have of it, I wouldn't see much point to breaking your wireless. Besides, as long as your above %15 or so your won't see much of a speed increase.
Yep

I have noticed that Ubuntu tends to report signal strength quite low for some reason. I wouldn't worry about it.