My Wife's New Centrino Notebook Wireless Adventure.

[rkr1958]

Got my wife a centrio notebook for Mother's day ... All had seem well, especially after I got her a wireless mouse ... until last night. I was asleep when you came to bed ranting and raving how she was ready to through the notebook out the door. Apparently, she kept getting disconnected from the internet. Well ... it was late and I told her I'd take care of it.

Well, sure enough ... the wireless connection to the internet (802.11g) kept getting cutoff when I tried it today. I was running it on battery just like she was last night. Well ... just to troubleshoot I decided to run it with the power cord plugged in. Guess what ... no problem ... so I did some searching on the web and figured out the the wireless network power management setting was set likely set to maximize battery life. Apparently this is a known issue in which this setting causes frequent disconnects.

The solution, change that setting to maximize performance (which minimizes battery life ... some).

The good news is that I've been browsing the net on battery for the last hour and a half with no problems. The bad news ... my wife got so frustrated with her notebook last night she doesn't want anything to do with it right now.

I'll just take her some time to "trust" the notebook again. Also, like I told her last night and today ... do every get that frustrated again with any computer ... whatever the issue ... I told her that I would fix it for her.

Anyway ... I through with my rant now ... And, a wireless notebook, I call them laptops, is fun.

[guns1inger]

look's like you scored yourself a new notebook (er, laptop). Funny how the so-called practical, helpful default settings seem to screw everything up.

[ofbarea]

I also use a Cetrino laptop (Thinkpad X31). I workarounded this problem by installing the latest driver for the wireless adapter and manually setting the wireless driver to the highest performance. For my laptop, this setting is in the Advanced tab.

[Ward River]

I always create my own customized power management profile(s) with all my own settings for my laptops. One for on the cord, one for off the cord indoors, another for off the cord outdoors, etc. I don't even give the default preset modes the chance to screw me over.