New r3230ca owner

hi all,

this forum is awesome, so cool to see so many owners of different laptops coming to once place and share their thoughts and information.

i love this new piece of machinery... fast , albeit a bit heavy it's quite nice for the price i paid $1599 CAD from futureshop.

i have just 2 slight peeves about it tho and i'm wondering if anyone can answer these for me.

1. the broadcom wireless g connection to my linksys wireless g router (1 feet) away, sometimes just drops out saying connection not available and then it connects again. happens at least 2-3 times in a few hours interval.. anyone know if this is a normal thing? this is my first wireless internet device. should i get another wireless adapter and plug it into the pcmcia(sp?) slot instead?

2. it comes with a sd/ms/pro/mmc/sm thing on the side to view those little memory cards. i have a 8mb sd stick from my canon digital camcorder and when i plug it in it starts installing drivers for "TI_Ultramedia SD" hardware then says install failed or something. I couldn't find anything on this.. does anyone know if there's a problem with my notebook or is it just that sd card?

thanks guys!!

[ ]

R3000
R3230CA AMD64 3000+

 

I'd suspect interference from other 2.4GHz devices (cordless phones, other APs in your neighborhood), but I'd flash in the current firmware for your Linksys router just to be thorough. (2.4GHz cordless phones are evil. 900MHz works better for phones too since it has less trouble with obstructions like walls.) If there are other APs within range, try switching channels (to 11, say) in your Linksys configuration.

FWIW, I plugged a 256MB Memory Stick Pro into my card reader and the necessary drivers installed OK. You might need to disable your antivirus scanner for the drivers to install correctly.

 

hey, first off thanks for the post and visiting the forums!

1) hoo boy, diagnosing wireless internet problems is a voodoo science at best. it could be your router acting up, your ISP or your internal wireless card. or maybe the neighbor picked up their long range wireless phone and it interferes with your router...laugh but it's possible. You could try plugging in another wireless card into the pcmcia slot and disabling the internal wireless to see if this helps things and if you keep a constant connection (borrow a friends so you're not wasting your money for this "test")...if it does you know your internal wireless card has issues at times with the router. You could try using another wireless access point (go to a coffee shop, friends, free hotspot or something) and see if you drop a connection there from time to time...if not you can blame your router at home. Also, read this article: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.aspx?newsID=2015 and double check that you've got this patch that helps with wireless connections for SP2.

2) 8MB SD card? man, you can't give such a thing away free these days [ ] That's a really old card my friend, you can blame the card and not your notebook. You can pickup even a 128MB SD card from Amazon for really cheap these days...might want to ask for one for Christmas or something [ ]

 

Thanks for the replies and the welcome.

I'll definately give that a try . perhaps get a pcmcia linksys card and see if it drops as frequently or not.
It might be the phone since i have a 2.4ghz phone, however i'm never on it when the connection drops.

This forum is awesome, or maybe just the fact i can view it in 1280x1024 on this widescreen notebook makes it so much more enjoyable. [ ]

R3000
R3230CA AMD64 3000+

 

Unplug the phone and see what happens. Seriously.