Thinkpads Forum

Just set up a new T400 for a client. The Intel 5100 just hovered between 1.0 and 2.0 Mbps but with a full signal strength. I never saw 54. Meanwhile my old T42 with it's Atheros 11/a/b/g card saw 54 Megs all the time. And transfer was slow...I believe the 1 - 2 Megs.

I was just using XP's WZC instead of Access Connections....on both TPads. I upgraded the Netgear firmware to the latest, and downloaded the lastest driver for the Intel 5100. No joy. Tweaked everything I saw in the 5100's driver.

Is this just a problem wireless card? I see some other complaints about it here. Any solutions?

Intel 5300 is much better than the 5100. Not certain why Lenovo even offers 5100 on a premium "T" laptop.

FWIW, my T400 has the 5100 card, and I connect to my home network at 54 Mbits (and I see around 20 Mbits in actual throughput). It sounds like there is either a problem with your card or an incompatibility with the access point.

Can you take the machine somewhere else (a coffee shop or something) and see if it can connect to a different network at a higher speed?

dfumento wrote:Intel 5300 is much better than the 5100.

Its not better, just different. For 802.11n access points/routers available today, the performance of the 5100 and 5300 are the same.

The additional three channel feature in the 5300 is not supported by any readily available 802.11n access points/routers at present.

Cheers,

Bill B.

Afty wrote:
Can you take the machine somewhere else (a coffee shop or something) and see if it can connect to a different network at a higher speed?

No....it's a client's machine. I do that and I have to charge her for another hour of my time. Thought of that too.