Any wifi problems in USA?

[dlubar]

Great forum. I was about to buy the AAO last week, but while reading as many forums and reviews as I could find, I kept noticing mentions of various wifi problems. Since I'm planning to use mine mostly for travel, spotty wifi would be a killer. The problems seem to be clustered in certain countries, which (along with the SSD discussion) makes me wonder whether there might be some hardware differences in different production runs. I'd appreciate it if some of you who bought the AAO in the USA could say how well the wifi works (or doesn't work). Thank you.

 

[Sid]

Spotty wifi - well my UK One has better wifi capabilities (range) than any other standard laptop I have ever owned, about (30 laptops to date).
It will be interesting to see what the folks in the USA have experienced.

 

[dlubar]

Thanks for the reply, Sid. It's good to hear a report from a satisfied user.

David

 

[niem102]

I should be getting mine delivered sometime tomorrow, so I'll be sure to test it out and get back to you then

 

[niem102]

Just got it today, and the wifi works great. I used to have problems getting much of a signal from the router in my bedroom and kept losing the signal on my old laptop; now I'm downloading Open Office in my room with a good connection strength at my routers max speed and no problems so far at about 30% of the download while browsing this forum. It's much better than my old laptop.

 

[blackjack]

I've only used it (XP/120GB model) at home, condo in my case. I bought a $50 Linksys Wi-Fi router (newer one with the internal antennae) and it set itself up nicely -- I'm a goob at setting these things up.

It seems to work pretty well. Unlike others here I don't have a "real" laptop to run comparisons with. I've downloaded and installed various things (Firefox, Opera, XP updates etc.) and it's handled it all pretty well, esp. for a $350 machine.

I tried using it at a Panera restaurant Sunday, but though I could "see" Panera's Wi-Fi, it wouldn't connect. They have a brochure with some instructions:
http://techtalk.wfu.edu/panerawifi_brochure.pdf

I'll give that another try later in the week. I think the McDonalds very near to my office also has Wi-Fi but it's no longer free.

 

[dlubar]

Thanks for the replies, Niem and Blackjack. I'm seeing new reports of problems on Amazon's comments, and there are more entries popping up here with wifi problems. Techie started a thread in an attempt to gather everything in one place. Several people have posted various fixes. It would be nice if Acer stepped up, admitted there was a problem, and gave an indication of the status of the fix. I really want to buy one, but I know that, with my luck, I'll get the smaller battery, the slower SSD, and the disappearing wifi.

 

[Infinity]

I've had connection issues with secured networks with both a Linux and an XP A1. The Linux is working now thanks to a user fix posted in another thread, but I don't have the XP working on secured networks yet. I know other people who do not have this issue, however.

 

[dommer]

I seem to be getting slow wifi speeds, much slower than my Dell laptop especially, and it claims a weak signal, when my Dell says very good. Anyone with similar problems?

 

[ani88]

I seem to be getting slow wifi speeds, much slower than my Dell laptop especially, and it claims a weak signal, when my Dell says very good. Anyone with similar problems?

IN USA: When compared with my Apple Powerbook G4 (801.1g) and HP (801.1g) on a N router, the AAO (Windows XP) performed at 54mbps (max since it is also operating on 801.1g) but the actual download/upload speeds were only HALF of Apple's and HP's. I've ran multiple simultaneous tests on speedtest.net only to find consistent results.

Changing the power save mode didn't help :?

 

[a44l]

Wifi works fine when charging cord is used. When cord is unplugged it fails. Computer sees my network but fails to display the web page. I have the 120 Gb XP model. May be part of a power profile.

 

[3earnhardt3]

Running ubuntu/xubuntu wifi speeds are only slightly off my lan for my desktop. Connection seems to be pretty strong, I was able to connect to my school wifi from ~150 yards away in the parking lot with full strength. Seems to be hit or miss for people I guess. Or maybe its just making up for the fact that I have the crappy ssd and 2200 battery.

 

[blackjack]

Hey! I was able to successfully use Panera's Wi-Fi on my Aspire One today. The settings in that Panera PDF link I mentioned worked fine as it turned out.

I think I figured out the settings Sunday, but because I didn't reboot the AO at the time (Panera's instructions remind you to reboot/restart once you've figured out the WiFi/SSID settings), it didn't work until I tried it at another location today.

I've never used it before. When you open your default Web browser, it should open on a Panera Splash page. It has some info and limitations (like in theory they limit you to 30 minutes consecutive usage during lunch rush hour, 11:30-1:30) listed, and some stuff to agree to before you go online. Although there's no account to set up, there's a couple things to click before going online.

It worked pretty smoothly although when I posted at another forum, there was a brief hiccup before the page refreshed.