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Poor Wifi Reception on new SR MBP - defective?

C

cgi101

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 13, 2006
60
0
I got a new 15" Santa Rosa based MBP last week. I've been noticing poor wifi reception on it lately. I see other people posted about wifi problems on their new SR MBP's, but they had more of a disconnecting issue, and not necessarily a consistently poor reception issue like mine:

Most notably, when I am working at school, my friends with regular C2D Macbooks will have "full" signal strength according to the status bar on the top right of the screen while my MBP gets maybe 1 or 2 bars on the status bar. Simillarly if I open "internet connect" I see the signal level is always 1/2 to 1/4 the strength they receive. I originally thought "well, these are just rating bars", and since my wireless was still working, that is was fine. However, I have now noticed times where my wifi signal will drop completely and I will lose connection to the network, while all my friends on their MB's next to me still have FULL reception and don't get disconnected.
If I restart my computer or turn airport on/off it sometimes immediately says that I have full reception (ie all bars) like my friends, but then will start fluctuating up and down and eventually settle on just 1 or 2.

Whenever this situation happened I would bootcamp my computer into windows vista, and test the signal strength, and it would also be poor (but it wouldn't fluctuate like on OS X... it would just remain at 1 or 2 bars and say "fair").

Does the MBP have much worse wifi reception than the MB's, or is my airport defective?

Any ideas?

Thanks!
 
cgi101 said:
Does the MBP have much worse wifi reception than the MB's, or is my airport defective?
Click to expand...

The MBP's have always been a little worse than the MB's due to what they are encased in. Plastic doesn't block the wifi or whatever as much as the Alu.

One of the many reasons Apple should find a new design already.
 
has anyone else experienced the difference between the MBP and MB's reception being this substantial though? we're talking two people next to each other, one (the MB) getting all 15 bars in internet connect, and another (the MBP) getting 1 or 2 bars or sometimes even loses complete reception and drops the connection??
 
My 17" SR MBP is significantly worse in wifi reception than the 15" PB 1.67 it replaced. At home with a Belkin Pre-N router, it drops connections even though I'm 10' line of sight from the WAP. At work with an "g" AEBS it's slightly better, but still doesn't get more than 3 bars even though I'm 6' away from the thing.

This makes me very sad. :( I hope there's some fix forthcoming.
 
I'm seeing the same problem. I've got a C2D macbook and a new SR macbook pro. Sitting side by side, the macbook signal level is always at least 8 bars while the SR is barely hanging on between 0 and 3 bars.

Is the wireless reception in the previous macbook pro this bad or is this something new with the santa rosa version?
 
BrandonMatt0718 said:
Whatever it is I hope they fix it before mine is delivered. :( Is it really that big of an issue?
Click to expand...

Don't get too discouraged:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3747

"Apple has built-in Airport Extreme to this MBP, featuring wireless connectivity to 802.11 b/g/n networks. The signal strength and range it acquires is excellent, picking up networks I didn't even know were near my house, along with my own. Bluetooth is also built-in, but I have yet to find a use for it, but probably will find a mouse for it in the next few days to continue to keep the limited USB ports free."

It seems to be a small/isolated issue
 
I'm worried about mine now goddamnit. I'm sat at my desk and my Airport is underneath it and I'm only getting 6 bars in 'Internet Connect.' Not good, not good at all.
 
I'm using my SR MBP with a new Airport Extreme base station and have no trouble with reception. I get anywhere from 12 to 15 bars depending upon my location in the house.
 
cgi101 said:
has anyone else experienced the difference between the MBP and MB's reception being this substantial though? we're talking two people next to each other, one (the MB) getting all 15 bars in internet connect, and another (the MBP) getting 1 or 2 bars or sometimes even loses complete reception and drops the connection??
Click to expand...

Whether I am sitting 5 feet or 20 feet from my Airport Express, I get 3/4 bars - in fact I don't even think mine has gone up to 4/4 bars yet (except when first turning it on of course). Now although mine maintains 3/4 bars from a pretty good distance in another room in the house, it will just drop randomly, and I haven't found a fix yet... :mad:
 
I'm noticing the same weak behavior. Just tonight I had to get ~20 feet closer to an AP than a new HP DV6000 laptop just to see the network the HP was connected to.:(
 
I'm using a Pb 12-inch atm and my flatmate has a MBP 17-inch (C2D 2.33Ghz) and he has much worse Airport reception than I have.

I'm getting a SR MBP 15-inch this week and I hope that one is more on par with my PB12 than his MBP17, which is mediocre.

Also a friend of mine has a HP el-cheapo 1.83Ghz duo which is far better than mine again..
 
OK, I don't understand this, but I'm relatively happier now - since the day of Audio Update 1.0 for the SRs I've had full strength signal reception and a lot fewer dropouts. The Mac still doesn't remember my WAP on wake from sleep. Maybe they're fixing things. Audio Update 1.0 doesn't seem to have ANYTHING to do with wi-fi. Go figure.
 
cluthz said:
I'm using a Pb 12-inch atm and my flatmate has a MBP 17-inch (C2D 2.33Ghz) and he has much worse Airport reception than I have.

I'm getting a SR MBP 15-inch this week and I hope that one is more on par with my PB12 than his MBP17, which is mediocre.

Also a friend of mine has a HP el-cheapo 1.83Ghz duo which is far better than mine again..
Click to expand...

Hopefully its better than mine, which is a 2.4 MBP...Im kinda pissed off that it is soooo terrible - sure I expected the signal to be less than my MacBook, but literally less than half the distance? Bull...
 
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