NP8130 WLAN issues

I purchased a Sager NP8130 late last year from Xotic PC, and had a good experience with them. I'm pretty happy with the laptop too except for a few minor odd cosmetic choices Clevo made on its design.

Then the other day I was playing with some RDP sessions on my home network when I started thinking to myself, "Man it shouldn't be running this slow regardless if it is RDP or not." Well sure enough my wifi card (a Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230) was kicking out 65Mbps. Only every once in a while it would jump to 78 for a few seconds.

My cheapo 30 dollar wifi usb adaptor was doing 130Mbps no problem. So naturally I went into my Buffallo WZR-HP-G300NH2 router and started fine tuning all the settings till 3 in the morning. Ironically I got my desktop wifi adapter to 300Mbps from its 130, but the Sager was still chugging at 65Mbps.

This thing was sitting right next to the desktop so it couldn't have been getting some dramatic amount of noise. Maybe one of you guys have some input for me on this? I havn't given up completely, tomorrow i'm gonna take it to work to see what it returns against my AP's at work.

At any rate I did some research on this Intel Centrino and decided maybe it wasn't the way to go after all. I thought i'd at least take a look around the internet to see what it would cost to get a better embedded WLAN card for the Sager. Unfortunately, I found next to nothing except a couple older cards on Amazon. I then called Xotic PC and they told me that they couldn't sell me a WLAN module. I'd have to RMA or buy a new laptop.

Well that's fine and dandy, but A) the part isn't broken, and B) why in the world would I buy a new laptop for an easily replaceable part. Surely someone sells the Intel Ultimate or Killer Networks WLAN cards that ship with the NP8130's.

I would have bought the older Killer Networks 1102 card I found on amazon for cheap, but I was concerned about the Bios possibly having a whitelist that would conflict with non-sager listed WLAN cards. I have no real interest in modifying the laptop BIOS. The machine works fine for my purposes except this replaceable card.

I'm still shocked on how hard it is to find the part. Anyone know where you could buy these Intel Ultimate or Killer Network WLAN cards at?

 

I'd recommend changing a few settings on your card before getting too worried.

Go to Start > Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change Adapter Settings > Right click your wireless, Properties > Configure > Advanced.

Go in and make sure your channel width is set to auto (assuming you have an N router, this will make a big difference).

Also, there's no whitelist like some laptop models have. All wireless cards will work.

 

As Anthony mentioned all wireless cards will work. You can put the Bigfoot 1102/1103 in there or any other Intel card. The 6230 you have in there now has bluetooth included with it, do be aware if you upgrade to any wireless card that doenst have blue tooth you will lose that capability. If you dont use it then its really no big deal but if you'd like to have it on there you can get a USB adapter to get it back on.

We dont sell parts individually, while we do offer after the sale upgrades you do need to set up an RMA so you can get a RMA number so we know whats going on with the notebook once it arrives. If you didnt it would just be a notebook arriving to us and we'd have no idea what needs to be done with it.

 

Anthony, thanks buddy, I feel stupid for not finding those configuration options earlier. Now i'm seeing 150Mbps to 180Mbps which is most certainly acceptable for me. Perhaps with fine tuning I could see 300, but this is great now.

Also guys thank you for the confirmation on if it had a BIOS whitelist or not, that's a relief. This card works for me now, but I guess my question (if you have an answer) for my curiosity, is where can I buy WLAN cards for laptops? All the typical channels I would have thought would sell this (like Newegg) didn't pull up any results on searches.

Finally, Hutsady, what you're saying makes sense to me now. Thank you for the clarification.

 

I got my Bigfoot Wireless-n card from Mythlogic, they have the 102 and 103. If you contact them they might be able to get you somethimg else.