My t400 wireless!

Hey guys I ordered my t400 a week ago and I chose the Thinkpad wireless card instead of the intel 5100 and 5300. Is the thinkpad wireless card made from atheros? Also is it a mistake that I didn't get the 5100 and 5300? because Mainly I am going to use this laptop at Home (Don't have a wireless N router), and At my university (which Im not sure what kind of router they use). Will I be able to upgrade in the future, as in swapping out the cards? Because Everyone is saying how there is 3 antennas in the 5300, are those 3 antennas on the wireless card it self? or built into the laptop already?

 

Yes the ThinkPad Wireless b/g uses an Atheros chipset.

Most public WLAN in North America today are still B and G, but in the near future I'm pretty they will slowly add the N support. However, G or N, it won't really affect your Internet since both are still faster than most Internet lines, for now. N is more useful for transferring large data within a public or private WLAN. For example, if your home or office is set up with N routers, then you can take advantage of the higher speed of N for transferring files with computers within your network.

The 5300 does use 3 antennas, the antennas are not on the card itself, normally they're inside around your LCD panel. This is why you can't really upgrade your card, unless you manage to install the extra antennas yourself.

 

So right now my laptop will be configured with 1 antenna unless i change my order to the 5300?

 

yes, that's right

 

Almost all cards use two antennas for diversity/multipathing. What I don’t know is, does the T400 have three antennas built in—but only two of them are connected to the cards unless the 5300 is purchased?

 

I'd like to see some reviews on the 5100 vs 5300.. Only reason I would get the 5300 is if it has better range, and if it could maybe get me reception at school in some of those spots where my connection tends to die out!

I don't care as much about speed (since, like a previous poster said, the speed will be faster than the internet connection), but being able to get reception in those "dead" areas would be pretty awesome

 

Likewise, but I imagine if the 5300 does show gains, I’ll mainly be with 802.11n—which is rarely deployed at this time.
Some quick Googling came back with something simple from http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3356&p=6&cp=2.

 

I'm pretty sure the 5300 has a better reception due to its 3 transmit spatial streams and 3 receive spatial streams, the 5100 has only 1 transmit spatial stream and 2 receive spatial streams. And the price is only $15 difference.

 

Hey guys I just called lenovo and they said that my t400 should have 3 antennas built into the laptop itself already, so that it can be easily upgradable in the future. Hopefully the sales rep is right.

 

This is good news—unlike other manufacturers, I’m glad to see Lenovo be forward thinking here.