New laptop has worse wireless connection?

[Compddd]

Girlfriend upgraded from an old 2004 Toshiba laptop to a Lenovo Ideapad Z570.

Now her wireless internet connection is dropping randomly and frequently, it never dropped on the old Toshiba.

Using a Linksys WRT54GS with the latest firmware.

Any ideas?

 

[JackMDS]

Well.. new does not mean that the Wireless card and the Antenna construction in the new Laptop is better than it was on the "old" Toshiba".


On the New laptop try the latest Drivers from Lenovo support page and force load them this way.

Download the drivers and unpack them to a folder of your choice.

From an Admin account.

In the Device manger, right click on the adapter, http://www.ezlan.net/Win7/net_dm.jpg

Click on Update Drivers, and choose the Browse my computer for drivers,

Choose let me pick from a list , Click on Have a Disk and point to the folder with the Drivers.

Make sure that the Lenovo Wireless manager ( if there is one ) does not run together with Windows Native Wireless manger.

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In any case the GS was never more than low mediocre Wireless Router.

If the card in the Laptop is 802.11n capable might be that a decent N capable Wireless router will help to improve the Signal.

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Also look at the Power Savings in the New laptop's Wireless card.

Uncheck the Network Card's Power Saving (I.e., do not let the card save power).
There might be some variations on where the Power saving setting is.
Here are few examples, YMMV, look around in your systems.
Example, http://www.ezlan.net/example/powersave.jpg

Example, http://www.ezlan.net/Win7/power_sav_wireless..jpg

Example, http://www.ezlan.net/Win7/power_save_win7.jpg

Example, http://www.ezlan.net/Win7/adv_power-sav.jpg

 

[Compddd]

It said I have the latest drivers when I tried updating.

I turned off the setting allowing it to save power. Think it'll fix it?

Btw Broadcom's website is very poorly designed and confusing.

 

[JackMDS]

It said I have the latest drivers when I tried updating.

When trying to update the drivers by just pressing on the Update feature in the devices’ entry in the Device Manager the computer checks the drivers on Microsoft Update server.

However, the Drivers on the Update server are not always the most updated drivers.

The manufacturer (or support site of the computer) might have newer drivers that were not yet submitted to MS Update server.

That is why I suggested to do force Install of the latest that you can find on Lenovo.

 

[Compddd]

I did do force install of the latest ones from Lenovo, it said I have the most current already.

 

[Emulex]

go get a buffalo airstation. the 2.4 only is 834 (hackable to 1000mw) and the 2.4/5ghz model is 834mw on both - awesome.

WZR-HP300gn is what i rock and you can even hack better directional antennas (two external 1 internal) and with +25dbi gain yagi and 830 to 1000mw (1 watt) you could bridge two of those on busy 2.4ghz network for mile run easy.

remember power + antenna gain = dbm which is what you want. the new trendnet 900mbps (450 on 2.4 and 450 on 5ghz) is cool but their router/switch portion is teh sucks.

I was blown away at performance difference between my WRT600N/WRT54GL/WRT54GS and these buffalo - night and day. 15-18megabytes/sec on 2.4 in a busy neighborhood.

E4200/WNDR in same situation at 5ghz or 2.4 = 9-14megabytes/sec - sold them!

google YAGI wifi antenna's on ebay - they are cheap just get the right connector so you don't have to buy an adapter and hack away.

stock antennas are 2-5dbi these days on most routers. going to 20-25dbi is a MASSIVE gain. huge.

you might have to lower the power output if you run 25dbi - that might exceed the legal limits (muahahha) allowed.