Problem w/ sucky T60 wireless!

i just got a t60 and so far i can't say i like much about it. some of it is due to user error, i'm sure -- for instance, i should *never* have bought it with the 15.4" WS; my eyes just can't deal w/ the resolution -- and the rest of it is still unknown.

one thing i do know is that i'm having problems with the wireless. this one came with the ThinkPad 11a/b/g Wi-Fi wireless LAN Mini-PCIe US/EMEA/LA/ANZ.

when i go to Watch Now on Netflix and pick a movie to watch, the detected Video Quality is never better than the lowest setting, or "basic." Meanwhile, my crappy old Toshiba, sitting right next to my flashy new T60, it's Video Quality is always picked up as the best.

this is really disappointing, and if I can't fix it (along with getting used to and/or resolving a host of other disappointments), I may have to swallow the restocking fee and send the thing back. I love the keyboard and don't want to do this.

does anyone have an idea how i might solve this one problem?

thanks!

 

are you basing this whole wireless being "sucky" entirely on the auto-select quality from netflix.com? The Wireless card in yours is powered by an Atheros AR5006EX, which is actually one of the best wireless chipsets out there. If you can describe in more detail what else is so "sucky" about it, we can try to help you further.

 

sorry about that; yesterday, i guess i was just so frustrated by so many things about my new t60 that i guess i just let it go on the wireless.

anyway, the netflix thing is kind of a biggie to me, just because i watch a lot of movies that way. but the other thing is that downloading has been incredibly slow. what takes a few minutes on the toshiba takes about 30 on the t60 -- so much longer that i've been downloading things like openoffice on the toshiba, copying them to a hard drive, and then moving them to the t60. now that ain't right!

the odd thing is, though, that Access Connections says my signal quality is excellent and i'm showing a consistent receive rate of about 48Mbps. so, i'm hard pressed to understand what the problem is.

can you help?

thanks!

 

As fas as I know, the Thinkpad T60 has a pre-N wireless card. Is your wireless router pre-N or still b/g? The reason I ask is that you can have latency problems when going between the different configurations, i.e. if you have a b router and a g wireless card, it can actually be slower than if you had a b card.

 

let's see ... i have a g wireless router. what's that suggest?

 

To me, unless there is an underlying hardware problem, I'd suggest that that means it's a latency issue with your router and wireless card. Incidentally, what is your Toshiba's card?

To test to theory you could take your notebook to a bestbuy (US) / PCWorld (UK) type place and say you are looking at a new modem router and want to test if they'll work with your card so can you try and connect to one.

 

I actually changed the intel wireless card my thinkpad came with the ibm wireless one. 10X better. I am sure its something you can tweak if you know enough about a little networking.

 

Where does one begin to tweak such things?

I did a little more testing, toshiba vs t60, by looking at the actual transfer rates when downloading openoffice, a 100mb program.

toshiba: 272 to about 290 Kb/sec, right from the start.

t60: 82 Kb/sec to start with and then up to around 105 Kb/sec at about 12mb downloaded, when I stopped the download.

so clearly, eventhough the t60 says the signal is excellent, something is holding it back. ideas, anyone?

 

My desktop computer has a 802.11g card and it operates extremely well with a b router...

Also, my friend's ThinkPad has the built-in Intel wireless card and it operates flawlessly on a g router. Everything downloads extremely fast as expected.

So something else is going on here.

 

Also, what is wrong with the 15.4" screen? Is the resolution too low or too high? Which resolution do you have? I am interested in a 4:3 screen. It seems the general consensus on this board is to prefer the SXGA over the XGA. But I worry it might make the text too small.

 

To the original poster, so are you "floete" or "linter?" Or are you the same person with two different user accounts on this forum?

It would have to be an amazing coincidence for two different persons to both have a Toshiba and a Thinkpad laptop, and to both experience the same kind of wireless connection problems...

 

And when did Netflix start offering to let view movies online? How come I never heard of such a thing? I always thought that Netflix is strictly a snail mail thing, that is, they mail you a DVD via snail mail, you keep it for a couple of days and watch it at home, and then you return the DVD via snail mail.


Since when did Netflix start offering this online streaming video thingy???

 

I have the 15.4 WSXGA+ TFT. The resolution is too great for me and my eyes. The text is just too damn small.

Regarding the wireless. I think I got some hack of a tech at the IBM service center who had me install a new driver for the card and could not get wireless to work at all and then decided I had to do a complete factory recovery and reinstall. After hanging up, I reinstalled the driver and got it to work fine. Only, it did nothing to increase the download speeds.
So, I decided to go ahead and do a complete R&R. Only, when I went through the steps there, I'm only getting the message that "product recovery failed to restore your system."
Now I'm on hold to IBM once again.
Sweet hayzoos, this is killing me. I figure my hourly rate for work is about $200. Let's say I've spent about 15 hours so far trying to set this thing up and loaded with programs and etc etc and dealing with problems of one sort or another. And suddenly this becomes one expensive machine!!!!
Oh well I didn't want to work anyway ...

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It all depends who's been hanging around the Pc when I sit down and go. Sorry for the confusion!
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The streaming movies thing is relatively recent. I think Netflix introduced it about a month ago. It's pretty great. You get two free hours of streaming flicks for every dollar you spend for the regular service. So, I think I spend 18 dollars a month; that leads to 36 hours of free vids. Sweet!

 

Well, I am sorry for your problems.

But just out of curiosity, why are you posting under two different usernames?


And with regard to the WSXGA+ resolution, well, that's the typical resolution for most of today's high end laptop displays. If you are uncomfortable with this particular resolution, you are going to be uncomfortable with most other brand's high end displays as well.

But regarding text, I remember reading somewhere you can change the text DPI setting to 120%, so it appears larger. That's what most people do on high resolution displays to make text legible.

And I still like to know, since when did Netflix start letting you watch online streaming movies???

 

as taken from my posting just above yours:
"The streaming movies thing is relatively recent. I think Netflix introduced it about a month ago. It's pretty great. You get two free hours of streaming flicks for every dollar you spend for the regular service. So, I think I spend 18 dollars a month; that leads to 36 hours of free vids. Sweet!"

Meanwhile, I'm now running diagnostics on the hard drive, per lenovo tech support. they believe i might have a hard drive error. glord.

I've messed around w/ the DPI settings extensively. The problem is, once you start enlarging the text size on a web browser, certain sites start to fall apart: the line spacings go weird, words end up in the wrong place on the screen; and like that, all depending on the site.

 

you might want to try this tweak tester from BroadbandReports. http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks to test for TCP recieve window and the such.

Best of Luck

 

Well, I did a compete Recovery & Restore, resetting everything to the Way It Was in the Beginning, and that actually seems to have solved the problem. Transfer rates are way up into the 300s and the Netflix Watch Now screen is showing the same top marks as the ol' Toshiba. I still don't know what the problem was, but it seems to be fixed, and that's the important part.
Now, it's on to dealing with the resolution issues....
Thanks, all, for your thoughts on this one!