unreal25

Well got the new WNDR3700v2 today. Again dropped connections all over the place both WLAN and LAN. The router can barely survive after I start streaming 1080p video... and then keeps choking until I reboot it. Any internet test I do, I experience loads of dropped connections - e.g. youtube videos start loading then stop, speedtest.net the same it would just stop in the middle for 30 sec or so then continue. Needless, to say all those tests work flawless when I connect directly through my cable modem (Motorola SBG900).

Any ideas?

[4 hours later...]

EDIT:

Finally I seem to got it running. I tried to use WNDR3700 as a router, but there were some problems with it and SBG900 cable modem/router I have. (I didn't work even though I disabled NAT on the cable modem/router) So, I setup a WNDR3700 as access point only - and so far it seems pretty smooth. OpenWRT that I put was kind of buggy, it took few "Apply and Save" and reboot attempts to change few simple things so I switched back to stock firmware. I even thought I bricked it at some point - but all I had to do was a "hard reset": it's such a simple procedure - holding the reset button with 2 of my toes, unplugging the power cable with my other hand, holding the spoon with an egg in my other hand and singing Kumbaya... could it really be ANY easier? I think not.

Oh and btw, WiFi speeds are insane.

What the... with this forum.... first the speculation threads, then hot chicks thread, then coupon codes thread.... nothing locked.... I must be in heaven.

This is pure freaking win. I'm totally doing this.

'sup Marc. Btw Unreal is the first game I ran on my first 3D graphics card - I bought Riva TNT 16MB and it owned my friends' 3dfx Voodoo.

Slowly step away from that link.... easy....

Yeah it supports both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. The only difference I see is the 450mbps max WiFi but it's kind of new and I'd prefer older model that got decent firmware by now. I went with 3700 instead. Also snatched some cheapo $50 chair of Newegg - you'd be laughing if you saw what and how I am sitting when I am on M17x.

I mailed back the refurb to the guy from eBay - he apologized that it's not working and told me just to send it back then.

The Hardware Heaven link works now, but the review is pretty much identical in form to M18x one. It would be nice to put M11x-R1 and R2 results side by side and maybe compare it with other laptops in it's class. Battery performance seems really poor for a Sandy Bridge system - its actually less than R1 (on R1 I could push 5.5 hours watching HD movies - that's A LOT more than 3:20 in their test).

Keep in mind the m11x has a 9-cell battery and can work on IGP, so 4 hours is really low. I mea...n M17x-R3 can do better?

The most puzzling part: how the hell M17x-R3 has a bit better (25%: 5hours vs 4hours?) battery life?

"...is a very impressive looking machine thanks, in part, to the single surface area screen which is a high gloss layer which runs out to each of the four edges on the top half of the system. It is even more impressive on this larger model that the others."

If that's whats considered 'impressive' today, God save us all...

The review has pretty pictures, but is way too long - I wish it focused on important bits. I don't need a full detailed description of the computer when I can just take a look at those pictures.

"...and has an epic feel to the screen."

I guess it's not that bad then.

Yeah. I just read the review you posted, and there are plenty more reasons to choose M17x-R2 or R3. Or M15x even.

Degrees .... Fahrenheit I guess? Decent review. 3DMark06 score is pretty good too, but there seem to be some heat issues, huh? "Alienware/Dell is aware of the issues..." Deja vu once again customers are going to be guinny pigs. No, thanks.

Whoa, these prices are way too high! Especially given their previous hinge fiasco and other multiple problems the laptop had.

You're not the only one. But I guess GT 555M is the best they managed to put in that 14" system. One cannot help being little disappointed tho - there was a report on this forum of having M15x working with 6970M. I am not a "fan boy" of either nVidia or AMD/ATI, but would probably be more inclined to go with some ATI card instead.

$1200 for base conf, then about $1300 with less mediocre screen. Add to that NY tax and you're up at $1400 for a relatively heavy 14" system and GT 555M. Thanks, but... no thanks?

So first systems will ship in May. I am beginning to contemplate which configuration I'll go for if they let me swap my M11x for it + I add some $$$. Might just upgrade the screen. Warranty upgrades are pretty expensive - they turn out to be about the same as I paid for 1year extra for M11x after I already had it.

Eh ok I'll be packing this router back tomorrow or the day after that. I've just been busy last couple of days. Meanwhile I found out there's a new version WNDR4000:

Newegg.com - NETGEAR WNDR4000-100NAS IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n N750 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router

so I might go for that one.

Holy crap! It looks great!

Hm well I got fans running at 30% (which is I think 2K RPM) - and that's the low frequency sound that one can hear. I usually have volume a bit up when watching movies so I don't hear it. But if it's quiet enough, I see how it would matter. I hear it when I am browsing web or something like that.

I'll try to see if I can make the M17x running with lower RPM with the cooling mod and the fan control option in HWInfo32 that's posted on this forum.

For anything that's not gaming - any Thinkpad, Latitude or Elitebook are light years ahead of M11x, from the build quality / durability, display quality, cooling, weight, size, keyboard, accessibility of components, aftermarket upgrades and part availability and it's prices, dock station support.... I guess you could run 3D apps on M11x which are going to work better, but then one typically doesn't use ultraportable for that - rather a workstation laptop. It's still a useful laptop for other things - it's just not up to snuff (not even close) with business class laptops. (as an extreme example, see Thinkpad X220 w/ IPS)

On the other hand if you like to game, then there's really nothing that special out there. There's 13" Acer I guess.

OK, I think you are right. I thought about it - I think I'll "forgive" it happened if he at least apologizes.

Yeah that's the funny thing. OpenWRT looks like a professional, commercial firmware - while stock Netgear looks like it was written by some guy during the lunch break in 10 minutes.

Yeah that is true. I'll have to pay for the return shipping tho, but OK - I contacted the seller and explained. I got 12-13MB/s peak on WiFi. It was just ... beautiful. Too bad, the seller (etechdirect1) looked pretty legit.

I was thinking maybe a new WNR3500L for $70 from Newegg. On the other hand, I'm not gonna bankrupt for throwing in extra $50 for the better one. Hmmm choices, choices.

I think I got a lemon. With OpenWRT I get different - mainly LAN problems. The router chokes when I put some load both on WiFi and wired connections. But even just streaming mp3s doesn't work well - every song I hear an interruption at least 2-3 times. I am certainly not keeping it, since it has only 30-day warranty. I think I'll just send this one back with the stock firmware flashed back and grab a new one next week.

Missing serial number on the bottom of the router certainly does not improve my impression.

Hey,

So... I bought 2 SATA cables from eBay for $2.60. On the auction it said the shipping was free and the guy sent it from the same state (NY). However, when the mail came in I got charged $0.95 extra shipping.

Now I don't really care about $1 extra, but I do care about misleading auctions. I e-mailed the seller but still haven't received the response. Also the seller already left me positive feedback so I don't want to leave negative feedback before giving him/them a chance to say whats up with these charges. (Not that I wouldn't enjoy slapping a red negative feedback for this kind of shit).

Anyone else had similar problem and what did you do?

Thanks