ASUS Laptop NIC's - less than desired.. minor rant

[sfx2000]

Hey folks over at Asus... snatching defeat from the jaws of victory...

X200CA - it's the Best Buy Good Friday special perhaps - but it's a decent mini-laptop/ultrabook with an IvyBridge Celeron 1007U. I realize it's cheap - that's why I picked up one - open box at $229USD... touch screen win8 ultrabook/netbook thingy... on Windows is good...

Celeron (IvyBridge) 1007U - check
Intel HD Graphics - check (very linux friendly)
4GB DDR3 RAM - check (enough, even though on-board and not expandable)
320GB HDD spinning disk - check (plenty of room for dual boot and logging)
TouchScreen - nice, makes Win8/8.1 more tolerable, less handy for other OS's

Model Number: X200CA-HCL1104G

But still... you guys claim to be linux friendly, and the WiFi NIC included is probably at the moment, one of the most unfriendly ones out there - and Bluetooth, since this is a combo card, doesn't even work (although it is recognized) - currently running Ubuntu 12.04LTS - secure boot and general partitioning/bootloader issues aside...

Seriously folks... have a plan, end to end.. at least a working WiFi/BT solution for linux, and something that ties into your Router/Access Point/Bridge Strategy...

 

[KGB7]

Asus doesnt make the drivers, they just repackage the drivers that come from the maker of the wifi/BT.

So if you want Linux drivers, then head over to the website that made the WiFi/BT card and download the drivers from them.

 

[sfx2000]

Asus doesnt make the drivers, they just repackage the drivers that come from the maker of the wifi/BT.

So if you want Linux drivers, then head over to the website that made the WiFi/BT card and download the drivers from them.

but they put together the package at the end of the day...

X200CA - this could have been a very FOSS open box - and considering that it is very similar to the Apple MacBook Air 11 inch...

Hmmm....

 

[sfx2000]

FWIW - lspci output

http://pastebin.com/SRyktE1P

lsusb...

http://pastebin.com/sVPbHvpw

sfx

 

[speedingcheetah]

Lenovo/IBM laptops are worse. You can't change the wifi card. If you do, you get a message at boot "Unauthorized wireless card detected. Please remove and reboot"

I wanted to upgrade the low end draft N150 card in a few clients Lenovo laptops (and my own Lenovo ThinkPad to a AC card) but NOPE!....

My old Asus G sereis laptop I had, I upgraded the NIC just fine.

Linux compatibility is a challenge. Generally, the newer the card, the less likely change it will work out of the box in linux. Sometimes you can get windows drovers to install..or get it working somehow....but I just keep a small usb dongle that works in linux..

 

[ikoul]

Asus does include some pretty dinky wireless cards in their less expensive computers. Someone I know has one of their "Vivobook" notebooks and the card in it is some 1 stream/1 antenna, 2.4ghz-only adapter (a Ralink, I think). I've also had some experience with their netbooks that share the same design (not sure about the wireless chip though), and those held a wifi connection so unreliably in Linux that it was worse than not having support at all (because it gave you false hope).

 

[sfx2000]

Asus does include some pretty dinky wireless cards in their less expensive computers. Someone I know has one of their "Vivobook" notebooks and the card in it is some 1 stream/1 antenna, 2.4ghz-only adapter (a Ralink, I think). I've also had some experience with their netbooks that share the same design (not sure about the wireless chip though), and those held a wifi connection so unreliably in Linux that it was worse than not having support at all (because it gave you false hope).

That's the chipset in my X200CA - and this is also a combo chip with the Bluetooth.

Ralink corp. RT3290 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe
Ralink corp. RT3290 Bluetooth

Probably a good chip for tablets. and it runs ok in Win8/8.1 - linux is pretty much not usable - there's a number of bug reports against this chipset in Launchpad..

 

[RMerlin]

At least Asus doesn't seem to use a BIOS whitelist for wifi adapters. I easily upgraded my K53E to a Centrino 6230, and recently to a 7260.

 

[speedingcheetah]

Asus does include some pretty dinky wireless cards in their less expensive computers. Someone I know has one of their "Vivobook" notebooks and the card in it is some 1 stream/1 antenna, 2.4ghz-only adapter (a Ralink, I think). I've also had some experience with their netbooks that share the same design (not sure about the wireless chip though), and those held a wifi connection so unreliably in Linux that it was worse than not having support at all (because it gave you false hope).

At least Asus doesn't seem to use a BIOS whitelist for wifi adapters. I easily upgraded my K53E to a Centrino 6230, and recently to a 7260.

I have an older Asus eePC...netbook...that had one of those junk 1 antenna cards....i bought a second antenna off of ebay and put in my old Intel 6300 (i think) dual band card in it. (as I only use 5ghz in my apartment)..

Unfortunately(and very frustratingly) I can not upgrade my mothers laptop...a Lenovo....so I run a Ethernet cable to otehr room and laptop is tied to a wire when is is over....(or when anyone without a dual band wifi card comes over)

 

[KGB7]

You get what you pay for. You got your self a $300 laptop and you expect for it to have a $60 NIC??


eePC is around $200 and you complain about its crappy wifi nic?


ook....

 

[RMerlin]

I love Lenovo's laptops in general, but I agree that their use of a NIC whitelist is consumer-hostile.

As for the eeePC... It's meant to be a low-end product. Single stream Wifi makes sense for these type of devices where saving 5$ on a component makes a big difference (unlike 700$+ laptops which I still see selling with single stream interfaces). And the single stream interface is hardly the main performance bottlenecks on these (I only recently replaced my old eeePC 1005HA I was carrying around for work with a Transformer Book as I could no longer stand waiting 10-15 seconds just to open a web browser).

 

[KGB7]

I had plenty of bad experiences with Lenovo desktop PC's in the last year. The Win 7 image they use is total garbage. It takes at least 3 tries to update Windows. You get "windows update has failed reverting changes" message during update installation, over and over and over again.

You have to install 10 or 20 updates at a time, instead of doing 148 updates all at once.

Brand new computers, custom ordered, dont have the latest updates. So you have to sit there hours and upon hours installing updates.

 

[speedingcheetah]

You get what you pay for. You got your self a $300 laptop and you expect for it to have a $60 NIC??


eePC is around $200 and you complain about its crappy wifi nic?


ook....

No....i never said anything about money....u came up with those numbers..from where I don't know..

i got the netbook as a trade for a crap android tablet i never used....and i got a intel AC7260 dual band card as an upgrade for my Samsung laptop for $25 on Amazon....and put the one from my laptop in the nexbook....so both work on 5ghz now..

and price should make no difference....there in no reason those ancient single stream cards should still be around....imo.....

I can't tell you how many people complain to me when they dump cash on a modern router....then come back to the store or call tech support because they arent getting advertised connection speed from their device that is less than 2yrs old ....and its because of their wifi card is some piece of crap card N150....I see some G floating around...

 

[KGB7]

No....i never said anything about money....u came up with those numbers..from where I don't know..

i got the netbook as a trade for a crap android tablet i never used....and i got a intel AC7260 dual band card as an upgrade for my Samsung laptop for $25 on Amazon....and put the one from my laptop in the nexbook....so both work on 5ghz now..

and price should make no difference....there in no reason those ancient single stream cards should still be around....imo.....

I can't tell you how many people complain to me when they dump cash on a modern router....then come back to the store or call tech support because they arent getting advertised connection speed from their device that is less than 2yrs old ....and its because of their wifi card is some piece of crap card N150....I see some G floating around...

So where can I get a Porsche for a price of Fiesta??

 

[ikoul]

I think a single stream card is fair enough (I guess a laptop can be considered "low power" enough to only have one when operating on a battery, though I bet they're doing it to save money more than provide battery life). I do think it's kind of unreasonable to not support 5Ghz though, even on a budget device.

 

[speedingcheetah]

So where can I get a Porsche for a price of Fiesta??

craiglist..

 

[L&LD]

So where can I get a Porsche for a price of Fiesta??

craiglist..

Only if the wife is really p'd off!