Ah, should have noticed from your first post it's an Atheros. One "fix" commonly seen is to disable hardware crypto support:
Check if that helps?

before i put your commands in the signal strength was 72% and after your commands and a reboot it was 67%

Well, then you can safely undo those commands by editing the "options ath9k nohwcrypt=1" line out of /etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf.
*BTW in your case it's always good to have 'iwconfig' output accompany your reply.

i have moved about 3 feet away from the hub and i am getting 79%
i am sorry but i do not know how to take out the line you say?

iwconfig

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"geordiejohn"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: C0:3E:0F:3F:32:59
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power=16 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Power Managementff
Link Quality=70/70 Signal level=-40 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:3 Invalid misc:290 Missed beacon:0

lo no wireless extensions.

i think i might have to return to Windows to get a better signal.

Be root and then: is all.

BTW I see your bit rate is still low but you've now got nearly no more excessive retries and only a large amount of "invalid misc". I'm wondering what those values would be when you run 'iwconfig' when you're next the Access Point? How many Access Points are there in your vincinity and what frequencies do they use? (Check with 'iwlist scanning'.) Also what encryption method do you use? WPA2? Does the Access Point offer any other methods? (I mean while you should NOT EVER be using WEP but you could test and see if that improves the connection speed?)

grep -v "nohwcrypt=" /tmp/ath9k.conf > /etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf
bash: /etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf: Permission denied


iwlist scanning
eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: C0:3E:0F:3F:32:59
Channel:1
Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
Quality=68/70 Signal level=-42 dBm
Encryption keyn
ESSID:"geordiejohn"
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Bit Rates:6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
Mode:Master
Extra:tsf=0000006d897a1698
Extra: Last beacon: 93392ms ago
IE: Unknown: 000B67656F726469656A6F686E
IE: Unknown: 010882848B962430486C
IE: Unknown: 030101
IE: Unknown: 2A0104
IE: Unknown: 2F0104
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
Group Cipher : CCMP
Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
IE: Unknown: 32040C121860
IE: Unknown: 0B050300240000
IE: Unknown: 2D1AAC181BFFFF000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
IE: Unknown: 3D1601081500000000000000000000000000000000000000
IE: Unknown: 7F03000008
IE: Unknown: DD800050F204104A0001101044000102103B000103104700102A32537F0ADDC21A5CADD3C200AD1E6C1021000842726F6164 636F6D1023000842726F6164636F6D1024000631323334353610420004313233341054000800060050F20400011011000A42 726F6164636F6D415010080002200C103C0001011049000600372A000120
IE: Unknown: DD090010180203000C0000
IE: Unknown: DD180050F2020101800003A4000027A4000042435E0062322F00

lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

i use wpa2

thank you for all your help i am installing windows and if i find a solution to my problem i will come back to linux quick as lightning as i much prefer it.

i installed windows and went to Acer and downloaded the wifi driver and now i am installing Peppermint Linux to see if the driver download made a difference.
thank you.

OK. Please post 'iwconfig; iwlist scanning' output when done.

i installed peppermint but i had problems connecting to wifi so i installed ultimate edition 2.6.1 and my wifi signal is 94%

---------- Post added 12-26-14 at 04:30 PM ----------

john@john-laptop:~$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"geordiejohn"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: C0:3E:0F:3F:32:59
Bit Rate=104 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Power Managementn
Link Quality=67/70 Signal level=-43 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

john@john-laptop:~$ iwlist
Usage: iwlist [interface] scanning [essid NNN] [last]
[interface] frequency
[interface] channel
[interface] bitrate
[interface] rate
[interface] encryption
[interface] keys
[interface] power
[interface] txpower
[interface] retry
[interface] ap
[interface] accesspoints
[interface] peers
[interface] event
[interface] auth
[interface] wpakeys
[interface] genie
[interface] modulation
john@john-laptop:~$

Your bit rate now is 104 Mb/s and link quality is 67 out of 70. That's a good result. Congrats! (Please mark this thread "solved".)

thank you for your help.