How do you feel about wifi on T61?

I have heard many complaints about wifi on t61. How do you feel about wifi on T61?

 

Speed for whatever reason is considerably slower on this unit than on my Dell E-1505 or D630 with the same radio and all three have Vista Business....

 

There's a reason for the poor wifi performance on the T61. There are three cards available for the t61, two are Intel and the cheapest is by Atheros. The Atheros card has a far better front end than the intel card. Although I have the AGN card in my T61p, this week I will replace it with an Atheros card which will be far more sensitive. I did just that in my 3000 and there was a huge difference.

There is also a power management problem in the Lenovo software with vista which causes cards to be powered down. I've only had my t61 for a few days now but I haven't had any problems because my WLAN router and t61 sit on the same desk.

 

mine works well..

 

That's one of the most impressive features about my T61P: super fast connections wherever I am. Got the AGN card and it connects to more networks and through more distances than any other cards I've ever tried (without changing routers). Very pleased.

And the wireless WAN onboard at 3G speed is amazing.

 

Have the athereos card in my T61 and it is amazing so far. It has the best wireless reception in my house between two linksys wifi adapters (desktops) as well as an Aser laptop with an unknown card.

 

its necessary

 

My wireless performance is fine, Vista doesn't like to wake up and connect to WiFi like I'd want it to (i.e. come out of standby, recognize a network, determine the location, and connect)... Not sure if this is a wireless driver issue, Access Connections issue, or a Vista issue... but telling Access Connections where I am every time is getting a bit old... Considering uninstalling it, but it is nice that it sets/clears proxy information for me with me going back and forth to work.

 

I went with the lenovo card...(i think it's atheros)...it was the cheapest option and has been working flawlessly

 

The cheapest is the Atheros card and I believe it's the best of the Lenovo offerings.

 

the atheros is cool. but i wish it had the n-draft option. the intel AGN is awesome. i could tell the difference between my t61 and the other HP lappy connection thru a wifi service. mine's is 3 times better than the other. it's just amazing.

 

would you say N improves G performance a least a bit?

 

People really should consider Draft N. It's a very wideband signal and it's not going to be overly compatible with G. It's predicted to severely impact neighborhoods and communities that are working well right now. In other words, consider that you now have stable working communities where g people have whatever functionality they have. An N is introduced and suddenly many G people's wireless is disrupted. I wish they had relegated G to the 5 Ghz band. It is predicted to really tear up the three non-overlapping G channels in the 2.4 Mhz band.

 

works excellent...very good

 

Signal strength has been very strong so far.

 

the N-draft signal is way faster than A/B/G. i tried the apple store wifi using n-draft mode, i got a round 50% of the total signal strength (my workplace is kinda far from apple store) and the internet is nearly 3 times faster than my DSL at home. so, the N-draft is fast.

 

and the t61 picks up signal quite well. at the same place, my friend used the compaq laptop w/ wireless a/b/g. she could only get 5 to 10% of the total signal strength!

 

"the internet is nearly 3 times faster than my DSL at home. so, the N-draft is fast."

But you are also on a different ISP and therefore you are looking at two differences at the same time. The performance of the ISP (from the Apple store) and attributing that to wireless link speed which is an attribution that is not necessarily correct especially when you comparing it to DSL. It's very unlikely that the Appl Store is using something as slow as DSL.

 

mine at home is quite fast, verizon w/ throughput @3.0mb. even at home, my t61 gets faster than my other 2 desktops. you guys should have a try and see the difference.

 

Are you using Intel card or Atheros card?

 

only the intel card has n from lenovo, which I'm assuming is what he has

 

I believe he is talking about a WWAN card and not a WLAN card,

 

isn't the whole thread based primarily on WLAN and not WWAN? aren't there separate cards for each as well? aren't the cards available for WWAN tied to the service provider and not swappable?

 

I just went back and re-read what he said. He could have been talking about either. I'm sorry.

 

No need to apologize, I didn't mean to be confrontational.

 

it's Intel® Wireless Wi-Fi Link 4965AGN.

 

Hey guys I ordered the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Is it any good? I wish I would have gotten the highest one but I kept thinking it was like external .....

 

I had that card and found it to have a pretty insensitive front end. I have replaced it with an atheros and am much happier.

 

Ok thanks renee

 

I have also heard that the atheros/lenovo abg card is much more sensitive than the intel abg card