Initial Review: T60p Communications

[jeremivw]

I've had my T60p for 24 hours now and I can say that, for me, this is the baddest machine around. Communications are astounding and abundant. The UXGA flexview screen is nothing short of miraculous.

I agree with most that the keyboard, general build, etc. are all terrific. I must say the term "industrial" seems the perfect description. I love the space between the base and the bottom of the LCD. And the black...ooh, yeah the black. Sexy.

However, I thought I'd focus a little on Communications of this machine, since that's essentially what I do.

WWAN (Verizon 1xEVDO): RF choice of the gods!

I have grown accustomed to my Sprint Cardbus EVDO on my Dell machine lately. It really works quite nicely all over the DFW metroplex and all over the state and country, too. I can average >1Mbps on large downloads (even over VPNs!) and have recorded consistent bursts very close to 2.0Mbps!

Now, that being said, I had to put this to the test. I've installed my Sprint card on the T60p, too, so I can do a comparison on one machine. I get the same performance with the Sprint card on my T60p (regular burst around 1.6-1.8Mbps).

With this verizon card, however, I'm not able to burst anywhere near as high...but I don't really care. The Verizon service and/or Sierra card seem MUCH more robust then the Sprint card. Though I'm only able to get burst of around 500Kbps, the speed seems MUCH more consistent (think xDSL vs. Cable) and latency (a big problem with cell data) is much lower (100s of ms vs. 3-400s of ms).

I wonder if I brought both links up (Verizon and Sprint) at the same time and created a bridge in XP between the two...what would that do??? Would it bring down the world? I'm very tempted to give it a try...I'd justify it calling it a Spanning Tree test for multiple carrier's networks.

Now, another plus of the Verizon card/service/software (hard to know which it actually is) is that their compression (another evil requirement of cell data) seems MUCH more sophisticated. When I'm...ummmm...surfing various pictures on the internet with the Sprint, the thumbnails and actual pics are very grainy and unclear. Much to my surprise so far, with the Verizon (again, something) pics are not grainy (at all) and seem about 95% (quality) of what I have via my house broadband over WLAN. Truely amazing if you understand what is being done to get you that data over these 3G networks...

WLAN (Intel 3945A/B/G): Multiple Access Point Test

Using my Cisco AP at work yesterday, I connected easily and quickly. The Access tools really rock with IBM.

I connected at ~5Ghz w/802.11a for a 54Mbps (~48Mbps actual link) connection and got GREAT transfer rates. I put as many walls between myself and the AP as possible and the link was only minimally effected. I was always at least GOOD it seemed.

Once I got home last night, I configured my home profile and connected w/802.11g @2.4Ghz for a link rate of ~50Mbps and strength of Excellent. I walked outside and to the other side of the yard and still had GOOD.

EDIT: Home AP is a Linksys (preCisco) WCM200 Wireless CableModem Gateway/Router/Firewall/Switch.

BTW: I didn't see it in the pictures, but the WLAN card does have diversity antennaes (one visible on the top of the LCD and another on the side above the WWAN antennae).

Dual Gigabit NICs: BOTH PCIe!

So the 945xM chipsets move most peripherals to the PCIe bus (finally) for laptops. This means the onboard Gigabit (Intel) chipset is on the PCIe (1x) bus for the first time in a laptop (even 915xM only had PCIe for graphics). Now I've added an Abocom ExpressCard/34 Gigabit Ethernet adapter as well for some protocol and application testing that I'll be doing, so I've got dual PCIe 1000BaseTX NICs. After carefull checking (couldn't find it in their specs) in the drivers it appears that this ExpressCard NIC is indeed using the PCIe bus (and not the USB2.0 bus as any ExpressCard can do).

Haven't tested I/O throughput yet (in one NIC and out the other) but it should be substantial over any previous laptop and considering that the traffic will be remaining on the PCIe bus.

Bluetoof: Call me Peter PAN!

I love BT. I can't wait to actually get my hands on something that does the EDR (2.0). Adding my Kensington mouse and my Motorola headset was a snap.

I'll post more as I have it! Any questions let me know!

[jeremivw]

Addition:

USB2.0 seems rock solid as expected. And truely fast (even compared to my USB2.0 on the Dell Lat D600). External HDDs and USB keys have been recognized and installed VERY quickly and I just completed a transfer of ~50GB in a little over an hour. Additionally, the USB ports seem to provide plenty of power. I've had issue (especially with the HDD enclosures) of drawing too much power from the USB and shutting the device down. Lastly, the fit of the usb ports against my cables/devices is nice and tight.

Oh, and I've done all of my work this morning on batt power (after an all night first time full trickle 101% charge up)! Plugging and unplugging hdds, flash keys, nics & flash reader in addition to cd installs of office 03 (full pro - 5 cds) and about 50GB of file copying from one hdd and all while on the Verizon network with all RF on using my BT, max performance power settings (basically no power man) @ full lcd brightness and I'm a little over four hours now (about to die though)! 9-cell really performs it seems

[dr_st]

After carefull checking (couldn't find it in their specs) in the drivers it appears that this ExpressCard NIC is indeed using the PCIe bus (and not the USB2.0 bus as any ExpressCard can do).

I sure hope so. Realizing the Expresscard via USB seems archistupid to me. Because the USB itself is implemented via PCI (or PCI-E), so why not go down the direct route?

[darrenf]

After carefull checking (couldn't find it in their specs) in the drivers it appears that this ExpressCard NIC is indeed using the PCIe bus (and not the USB2.0 bus as any ExpressCard can do).

I sure hope so. Realizing the Expresscard via USB seems archistupid to me. Because the USB itself is implemented via PCI (or PCI-E), so why not go down the direct route?

I think he's referring to cards like the Sprint and Verizon wireless which implement a USB controller on the card that's internally interfaced to a ethernet<->USB transciever on the card. It's done on the WWAN cards because their chipsets have an on-chip USB interface. To make a PCMCIA card, they just added a USB controller chip next to it. Kinda hokey really but it simplifies the driver setup somewhat.

with the Sprint, the thumbnails Wink and actual pics are very grainy and unclear.

Here's a tip with sprint EVDO. When you are viewing a page with pics that you want to see more clearly, press Ctrl-F5 (IE or Firefox) and it will load the uncached (ie uncompressed) images. Some have reported tricking the Sprint compression by modifying their browser user-agent to look like a different brand of browser software, but it didn't work for me - YMMV.

http://www.evdoforums.com/about1053.html

-darren