WiFi antennas in laptops

I've complained long ago about the WiFi antenna of the Lenovo X60s that I use at work, compared to other devices. Even a Nokia N810 proves to detect more networks with more signal power in medium and long distances, but you could not say that an N810 is a cheap device.

But I really checked it out now that I am trying my wife's Acer Aspire One in some sort of hard conditions. I live in the 5th floor of a block and my parents live in the 2nd. I usually get to their place to work with the needed peace of mind (wife+baby+puppy dog do not help much to focus on work) but I have always had the problem of WiFi, as my AP is not in the vertical to the room at my parents', where I am now staying. That means more walls to be crossed by WiFi transmission.

The fact is that I brought both the X60s and the Acer Aspire one and former cannot see my AP three floors upstairs while the wonderful Aspire One gets the signal with a 75%. And the Aspire One is one of the cheapest notebooks out there so it supports my idea of Lenovo using WiFi antennas of unacceptable quality for a machine that is meant to be used for work purposes on-the-go.

Drivers matter

I have always complained about the poor quality of the WiFi interface in ThinkPad laptops. I like the good work of IBM and Lenovo about them, but WiFi simply stinks.

I always disable their tool to manage network connections as Windows software is more basic but works much better. What I cannot change is the drivers: I get disconnected a lot with poor quality APs (Belkin, US Robotics, ...) and once in a while with better ones (Linksys, for example -special mention of the WRT45GL, which is cheap and works best-).

The problem is not only the disconnection itself. Sometimes the interface drops and I have to repair it via Windows option for network connections. Some other times I have to use the Thinkpad menu to reactivate the wireless interface. And it also happens that I have to use the physical switch for wireless interfaces (including bluetooth) and switch it off and then on to make it work. It has also happenned to me that I had to reboot the computer.

This is not acceptable at all.

And then comes Linux to fix the situation. I have recently installed Ubuntu in 4 GBs of space that were occupied by a hidden partition used for back-ups (which I do not use, because I prefer to back-up onto a different physical disk). The fact is that I get more WiFI signal in similar conditions, the driver never crashes and, at most, I only have to reconnect (and the only reason for this is that I -have to confess that I- am really far away from the AP and signal level is poor.

An important issue that Lenovo should fix soon, as new generations of Thinkpad come and they all suffer the same problem in Windows.