Thinkpads Forum

When I have my T43 attached to my new Dock II docking station, I close the cover of my thinkpad so that I can see my external monitor. The problem is that I'm seeing a serious degradation of wifi signal with the Thinkpad cover closed. I guess this is because the wifi antenna is in the lid of the Thinkpad, and when it's horizontal instead of nearly vertical, it's not properly oriented.

I've done numerous tests of signal strength and internet throughput that show that this is true.

Does anyone know of a good solution other than buying a UBS or PCMCIA wifi adapter and just not using the builtin wifi adapter?

Thanks.

BTW, I'm already using the PCI slot in the Dock II for a sound card.

hmm... weird.. well i guess even tho you said non-pcmcia you can however install one of those in the dock as far as i know? I dunno.. umm there are 2 antenna's in there so 1 should atleast give you some good signal still because one is on top and the other is on the side? Also even then the antenna wires that run up the back of the LCD should still give decent reception.

Are you at the point where you are only getting 11mbits out of 54 or something and you want to download/stream movies of your RAID II NAS drive? Otherwise even tho the signal is lower you should still be getting good speeds for just normal internet.

I just got off the phone with an IBM tech guy, and he said that the LCD screen does need to be vertical or nearly so for optimal wifi reception. Apparently there's a fix that they're going to talk me through tomorrow. If it involves taking the display assembly apart, I'm going to opt instead for a PCMCIA wifi adapter, perhaps with an external antenna.

I'll post again when I find out more.

Has no one else experienced this? Or maybe IBM assumes that if you're docked, you won't need wifi. Maybe that was true a few years back, but it isn't any longer. My home LAN is entirely wireless, and that counts two desktops, three notebooks and a printserver.

dhave wrote:Or maybe IBM assumes that if you're docked, you won't need wifi.

Its not being docked that's the problem, its operating with the lid antennas in a horizontal position, which is a problem for WiFi whether its docked or not, due to polarisation issues.

Cheers,

Bill B.

bill bolton wrote:

dhave wrote:Or maybe IBM assumes that if you're docked, you won't need wifi.

Its not being docked that's the problem, its operating with the lid antennas in a horizontal position, which is a problem for WiFi whether its docked or not, due to polarisation issues.

Cheers,

Bill B.

Hi, Bill. Thanks for the link to the polarization article.

Yeah, I've come to realize that the problem comes from orientation of the wifi antenna. But it occurred to me that maybe the IBM engineers a few years back hadn't anticipated that it would soon be common -- or not uncommon -- for users to have the lid closed and also want to receive a wifi signal. I'm just speculating that, from the engineers' perspective, the main reason you'd operate with the lid closed is if you're docked, and most people at a docking station would be in a situation where they'd have wired ethernet access. But things have evolved such that many households and offices are wireless.

At any rate, I'm interested to see what solution the IBM tech people are going to propose today.