Good news for Latitude X1 owners!

Indeed, Wi-Fi was disabled in the BIOS. Not sure why the Win7 install would change that setting. In any case - thanks for the tip! Very helpful.

Rich

 

Hello all
I just purchased a gigabyte GN-WI30N-RH wireless N network card for my X1. It works great with G networks, But since i only have two antennas in the X1 I am unable to discover any N networks.
Any suggestions how to get a third antenna cable ? and would any extra antenna cable like the ones already in the X1 work ?
Martin

 

Wow! Just stumbled across this group by accident today.

A year ago, I converted my own X1 to a poor man's SSD, using a 32GB Pretec 266X CF card (eBay), and the DealExtreme CF-to-1.8" adapter (D.E. item number 18463).

Works very well, with full UDMA R/W speeds.

READs achieve up to 40MB/sec throughput; WRITEs mostly languish in the 5-20MB/sec range. Installation was easy, though.

To speed things up and extend the CF lifespan, I use Linux (Kubuntu Hardy), and overlay a tmpfs (RAM based filesystem) on top of the CF filesystem.

So READs come from the CF, but WRITEs only go to RAM. Turn the power off, and all changes are lost. Unless I want to keep the changes: then I run a small script to snapshot the RAM back to CF, making the session permanent. I can also access the CF directly at any time for permanent R/W storage of specific files and stuff.

Also, at boot time, things are setup in GRUB to allow choosing between running entirely from CF (useful for system upgrades etc..) or running from CF+RAM as normal.

This works great for the road.

Meanwhile now, I'm studying all of the content here about installing true SSDs. It doesn't sound like there's much that is both available and affordable yet, but I do have the D.E. Zif adapter for eventual upgrades.

Cheers

 

Can anyone else confirm that 16gb SDHC cards work on their X1s as well? I have two X1s and it doesnt work on either one (My 16gb SDHC is just a generic one off ebay though, but it does work in my other newer laptop and readers, so I know the card works fine). Both of my X1s do read up to 8gb SDHC cards just fine though.

I'd be interested in the SATA adapter project more if it would give me more speed but the thing is it converts the SATA signal back to IDE via the chip on the adapter, so you don't get the advantages of SATA anymore speedwise. Maybe it'd be useful only if there was a particular SSD or drive you wanted to use and it was only available in SATA. Is this why you want to do this Ivar?

Also Ivar, my screen on both X1s I have are Matte, not glossy. The screens on them are noticeably different (the color hue, saturation, quality and brightness/contrast) if compared side by side, which is a bit odd considering they are both the same screen manufactured by the same manufacturer. One of my X1s is newer than the other though, as confirmed by build date and the CPU chip SL number. The newer one has the better quality screen and also underclocks better than the older one. The new one I can run it at 0.7V at the lower three multipliers, and 0.748 on the highest multiplier at 1.1ghz, while the older one runs at a min of 0.78 at 1.1ghz and also higher than my other X1 at other multipliers also. I keep both though since I like the X1 so much. I use them for low power computing around the house, and for leaving on 24/7 to download torrents since they use so little electricity and dissapate so little heat while idling. The electricity costs where I am are among the highest in the US if not the highest here in Baltimore city (I heard it was the highest but don't remember from where). My main laptop uses enough electricity as it is (below in my sig), and I cringe when I turn on my desktop HTPC which is a Phenom quad core. Maybe I should undervolt/downclock that too!

 

Hello all
I now have 802.11n (2.4 GHz only) network in my X1.
It 's not perfect, but it's there. Bourght a gigabyte miniPCI card, and three new antenna cables. It was very difficult to install the antennas since I placed them inside the LCD frame same place where the original antennas are placed, the third antenna is placed under the toughpad. I get 104-117 Mbps according to Vista. (but only 30 MBit/s in online speedtests ... ) But reception is only fair-good, in comparison to very good-excellent before. I suspect the antenna under the touchpad to be the problem. I will try to move it to the LCD frame as well. But it took me about 2½ hours to disassemble the X1 and fit the new antennas inside with the cable going behind the LCD panel. Then peice together the X1 again. Not an easy procedure since the existing antenna cables are detachable at the screen hinges and my new antennas are in one peice.

Another thing.
X1 fans might want to check out samsung Q40-B004. I am not sure if it is still available in hong kong/china. But it is definitely on my wishlist now.
Martin

Edit: Getting 270 Mbps reported in Vista. Throughput is ~ 45 MBit/s down, ~ 110 MBit/s up. on LAN. sweet

 

Has anyone gotten the CF card reader on the X1 able to read/write faster than 1mb/sec? I'm using Vista Ultimate on this machine and have tried just about every driver I could find for the Ricoh reader chipset but no CF card of three I tried are able to read/write faster than 1mb/sec and also slow down the system greatly when accessing it. It seems like DMA is not enabled for the CF reader. The SD reader which uses the same Ricoh chipset is fine though. Help please!

Also, thanks for the info Martin - wow I didn't know there was a Q40 - and it looks identical to the Q30/X1! I always dreamt of a machine that was more up to date with the design of the X1. It is impossible to find it in the US though, and doesn't really look like a huge upgrade either, so I personally wouldn't dish out the $ or effort to find one.

 

I did it. Installed a 2 GB Corsair ValueSelect DDR2 667mhz memory into my X1.
It now reads 1.99GB in XP Pro. The install was uneventful.
Now I have to decide if to replace my failing Toshiba drive with another similar drive, or go with an SSD.
I was hoping that by now the choices of SSD's for the X1 would have increased (since this thread began) but it doesn't seem to be the case.
Any advise?

 

My X1 works perfectly with a 16GB Transcend SDHC under Windows 7

 

jefkom: Stick with Mtron for your SSD needs. It doesn't matter what you get--any new SLC drive will be fine because your controller will cap the speed of the drive. Stick with what works.

 

There are some SSD drives on eBay with the right connector--Samsung, works great. I put one in with a 16GB SDHC for storage.