Laptop Internal Wifi Antenna replacement

So recently, the wifi signal on my laptop has been really bad. I Opened her up in an effort to ascertain the problem. It turned out, frequent use (and possibly the multiple drops) of the laptop had caused the wires of the wifi antenna to become completely split in twain directly outside the hinge of the screen.
In a desperate attempt to remedy the situation, I soldered the split wires back together. It looked like this. Due to my lack of electrical tape, I may or may not have wrapped duct tape around the wires afterward.
Anyway, this modification seemed to cause an ever so slight improvement in wireless signal, but it is still abysmal. With that being said, I realized it was time to throw in the towel, and buy another antenna. My plan was to simply buy an external USB antenna. However, while perusing ebay for the cheapest external antenna, I discovered that they sell a replacement for the internal antenna here
Due to the fact that I am a nerd, and also because it would cost at least $8 less, I would prefer to install the internal antenna rather than cop out and buy the usb antenna.
There is just one minor issue. On my particular model of laptop, it appears that those square parts at the end of the antenna would reside somewhere between the lcd and the backplate. HOWEVER, I kinda sorta glued the back plate to the LCD surround after one of the aforementioned times that I dropped the laptop.

SO, my question is, is it still possible to maybe run the antennas somewhere else and still receive good wireless signal? And if so, is it even worth my time, or should I just go the boring route and buy the external antenna?

 

If me, I would not bother (except to clean up that antenna area to ensure nothing else comes into electrical contact to exposed wires). Instead, I would disable that wireless device in the BIOS, and Device Manager. Then I would buy a USB or PC Card wireless adapter. Yeah, it costs a bit more, but no risk of collateral damage taking the notebook out completely. In any case, I would make sure I have good backup of my data.