9315 Wireless ability

[hamishrock]

I have just got home from Curry's and been trying to set the wireless connection up.

I have installed the drivers which came with the PC which is running Vista home premium, but it does not seem to have a wireless card on board.

I have checked System config and I can see the modem and the LAN SIS card, but nothing else. The box (and the salesman) says it is wireless ready. Is it faulty or am I missing something?

[Ranibeke]

It should appear in Device Manager
The wireless switch is is operated by pressing the function (Fn) key and F10 key at the same time.

Quote from the TechGuys (Official Advent Support)
"Please note that the wireless needs to be turned on every time the computer is restarted."

That to a lot of users is a pain in the ****

[hamishrock]

Thanks for that, the wireless did not exist within Device manager, until FN 10 was pressed (I can't find any reference to that anywhere in the documentation), but once pressed the wireless presents itself for installation and the drivers install, and then it appears in Device manager, and starts working.

PS
On the phone last night Currys told me they didn't think it had a card and told me to bring it back ?????????????

[btfm]

One thing I've noticed in Vista - the wireless reception when on battery is not very good - I have another laptop which is an HP (running XP) and I was finding that it could always get an ok wireless signal but that the new advent could not get a good wireless signal very often.

I found that if I switched the power profile on the advent to high performance that the signal strength improved a great deal - after some research I found that there is a not hidden but squirreled away setting for the default power profile (power saver) to fix the wireless so that it always gets a good signal I have found you have to perform the following:

Right click the power icon in the task bar next to the time
Select Power Options
Click change plan settings under the active plan (so power saver for example)
Clcik change advanced power settings
Expand the Wireless adapter settings by hitting the + symbol
Again expand the Power Saving Mode again by hitting the + symbol
Change the setting for on battery and plugged in to "Maximum Performance"
Click Ok
Click Save Settings

I have found no noticeable difference in the battery life but as stated above the wireless signal reception seems to be so much better.

For example I was staying in a hotel at the weekend, the signal strength was shown as poor and the advent kept dropping the wireless connection, when I changed the above settings the signal went from poor to to good and the speed went from 11mbps to 24mbps instantly.

Hope this helps someone.
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[marya]

First of all, a quick Hi from a newbie.

I love my iMac, but, against my better judgement, was eventually persuaded by my OH that a laptop PC would be a good addition to the household, so last weekend we forked out for an Advent 9315.

The first annoying thing about it is the fact that you have to press Fn and F10 every time you operate the machine in order to connect to our wireless router. However, I could live with that if the wifi connection was reliable but it is pretty dismal. Our ageing iMac (which has a lower spec than the Advent) can detect our own network and two others in the vicinity. The laptop can detect ours and 1 other. Move the laptop more than about 20 feet away from our router and it loses the connection.

I've optimised the power settings as suggested by the previous poster and so long as it is on mains, the Advent can now pick up a couple of feet further away than it used to. However, as you can imagine, this is still a really restricted area and renders most of our house out of wireless range for the laptop. I just knew we shouldn't have gone over to the dark side

[marya]

Move the laptop more than about 20 feet away from our router and it loses the connection.

Can anyone tell me if this is normal for a 9315? There's no obvious reason for the signal to be blocked other than our house is an older property so does have thick walls. I'm using an Airport Express.
Ta!