Do I Need a New Router or Modem? (1 Viewer)

[John Dirk]

Mike, unfortunately the included wireless adapter in your laptop is called a 1x1 adapter. This means it can only receive or transmit, not both at the same time. This severely limits the maximum throughput and speed of your wireless. I found a post about your laptop on the HP support forums, as you can see from the response you have a very hard limit due to the current card. The response also almost perfectly mirrors your experience with maximum speeds. He recommends a replacement that you could install and find on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/p/4019880518

Here's the support post I referenced:

WLAN Replacement/Upgrade for Pavilion 15z

I am looking to either replace or uprgrade my WLAN card for my HP Pavilion 15z, item number M7D88AV. I realize that the stock card is only 2.4 GHz, but when I test my Wifi connection i usually get speeds of between 10 and 30 Mbs, sometimes as low as 5 Mbs. When I use the same speed test on my...

h30434.www3.hp.com

Great troubleshooting @Dave Upton - I am amazed a laptop built in 2016 [or maybe 2015] would have a half duplex WLAN adapter. I remember when HP used to be a company you could trust for higher quality components.

Mike. I'm pretty sure the dongle will be able to communicate [via USB] directly to the laptops PCI-E bus, which should eliminate any limitation imposed by the built-in adapter.

 

[John Dirk]

cats are inherently evil so that's their job to eat the squirrels.

LOL - I know we have some cat owners on this forum but that has been my experience as well. Maybe I need to get one since I do have a terrible squirrel problem.

 

[Johnny Angell]

LOL - I know we have some cat owners on this forum but that has been my experience as well. Maybe I need to get one since I do have a terrible squirrel problem.

We need a new forum rule: “Thou shall not cast personal attacks at cats.” The difference between cats is that dogs have masters and cats have staff. Dogs will give their love, long after the owner has stopped deserving it. Cats won’t do that.

Now back to our regular programming.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Why do you think Ethernet cables are rated CAT5 or CAT6?

If you don't have the right CAT cable, your connection will be dog slow.

 

[Clinton McClure]

We need a new forum rule: “Thou shall not cast personal attacks at cats.” The difference between cats is that dogs have masters and cats have staff. Dogs will give their love, long after the owner has stopped deserving it. Cats won’t do that.

Now back to our regular programming.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

I should never have read this thread. Now I've gone off and bought an Intel 7260 card to upgrade my Intel 6205 card. It's $15 off eBay. Adds 802.11ac plus bluetooth.

 

[Johnny Angell]

Why do you think Ethernet cables are rated CAT5 or CAT6?

If you don't have the right CAT cable, your connection will be dog slow.

There ya go, casting aspersions at CATs...er...no...Nevermind.

 

[Todd Erwin]

I remember when HP used to be a company you could trust for higher quality components.

Two computer brands the Erwin household avoids like the plague (or would that be COVID-19 now?) are HP and Dell for that very reason. I used to service an accounting office that had HP desktops until the power supplies began to fail. Those desktops used a proprietary and under-powered power supply that HP no longer manufactured, and we basically had to junk them and replace them with Acer desktops. My wife's previous personal laptop was an HP that had a known issue of the screen dimming whenever a Windows OS pop-up would appear and upon clearing the pop-up, the only way to get the screen to return to its brightness was to reboot. HP acknowledged the issue but never, ever fixed it.

Dell is much worse. My old Dell desktop had a known compatibility issue with Norton Security and the companies ended up blaming each other and never fixing the issue (I uninstalled Norton and went with something else). More recently, my wife has gone through three Dell laptops from work due to overheating issues, despite having it propped up, sitting on a laptop fan, and blowing out the vents weekly.

We replaced both of our personal computers last Christmas. My wife got a very nice Asus gaming laptop (for its power in case she has to take up consulting again and NOT for gaming) and I custom-built a desktop for myself starting with an Asus motherboard.

 

[David Norman]

We need a new forum rule: “Thou shall not cast personal attacks at cats.” The difference between cats is that dogs have masters and cats have staff. Dogs will give their love, long after the owner has stopped deserving it. Cats won’t do that.

Modified Norman household rule -- Dogs have friends for life, Cats have slaves

 

[Todd Erwin]

All this time, has it been my laptop that's been the issue?!?

Blergh!!!! (I've been binge-watching 30 Rock.)

The AMD A8 cpu could be the bottleneck, too (it was considered a mid-range cpu four years ago) , especially on the wired connection (although it is also possible that the ethernet chipset may be half-duplex, too). To use the USB wifi adapter, you will probably have to turn off the internal card. You will probably see an increase in speed, but likely nothing close to what you are seeing on your wife's computer.

I usually recommend at least a higher-end cpu regardless of what the computer is being used for as a way of extending the life of the machine. High-end today typically won't become budget-level for many years. Budget-level today will become obsolete almost overnight. Another reason why I suggest to anyone looking at a Chromebook to go with at least a Celeron cpu rather than a mobile cpu like an Atom.

 

[Dave Upton]

Dell and HP both have great products on the enterprise side, but you're right the consumer products are awful. I generally steer folks towards Apple or Microsoft laptops, as their products are very reliable and well-designed. I personally use a gigabyte laptop with an OLED screen. Funny enough, my fancy gigabyte laptop came with a terrible killer NIC Wi-Fi card that I had to replace with an Intel 9260 which is incredibly fast and a much more reliable.

 

[Todd Erwin]

Dell and HP both have great products on the enterprise side, but you're right the consumer products are awful. I generally steer folks towards Apple or Microsoft laptops, as their products are very reliable and well-designed. I personally use a gigabyte laptop with an OLED screen. Funny enough, my fancy gigabyte laptop came with a terrible killer NIC Wi-Fi card that I had to replace with an Intel 9260 which is incredibly fast and a much more reliable.

Except that the Dell laptops her employer keeps sending her are "business class."

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

I don't like HP because they don't cater to the DIY types. If you want to fix something or upgrade a part, their attitude is "take it to a HP shop". Their BIOS tends to limit the parts you install to a limited number of "approved" parts.

I've had good luck with Dell since they post extensive maintenance manuals on their website. They walk you through the steps on how to add memory or change a DVD drive in the laptop I bought. My present laptop and desktop are their commercial grade units, purchased refurbished with new Win 10 license. They work well for units 8 years old with i5 Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processors. Yes I've changed out things like fans that got noisy but what would you expect after most of a decade of use.

 

[Dave Upton]

Except that the Dell laptops her employer keeps sending her are "business class."

Even so there's a big difference between the low end Vostro/XPS and Latitude models, and the two or three higher end Latitude and Precision models that they exclusively sell to enterprise customers.

My day job is overseeing an IT department so I have ordered thousands of laptops in the last several years from both HP and Dell, as well as Lenovo. I've been a pretty consistent HP customer for the last few years, but just recently started working at a company that orders mostly Dell. I've been very positively surprised by the new latitude 5400 and 7X00 series. I would continue to order any of them for your average worker, though for personal use I prefer Lenovo, Apple, or Microsoft.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I continue to be disappointed.

The AMD A8 cpu could be the bottleneck, too (it was considered a mid-range cpu four years ago) , especially on the wired connection (although it is also possible that the ethernet chipset may be half-duplex, too). To use the USB wifi adapter, you will probably have to turn off the internal card. You will probably see an increase in speed, but likely nothing close to what you are seeing on your wife's computer.

So I went to Staples today and overpaid on the USB Wifi stick. I got a Netgear AC1200. Paid $49. It was the cheapest one they had in stock. The others (all Netgear) looked more complicated and had positionable antennas and looked like overkill for what I was trying to accomplish.

It installed easily. The driver came on an included CD. I did not "turn off the internal card." Instead, the installation created a "WiFi 2" option which included a new listing of nearby wifi networks. This list, however, included my personal 5G network so I figured I was going to be all set to go.

However, this is the best it seems to want to do (this is a wifi speed test):

On the one hand I could be happy to think I've got twice the speed I was getting before this little adventure started. But I am still not anywhere near tapping the full potential of my service.

Any suggestions at this point? Do I need to turn off the internal card for any reason? Is the AMD chip the likely bottleneck at this point?

 

[Dave Upton]

I continue to be disappointed.



So I went to Staples today and overpaid on the USB Wifi stick. I got a Netgear AC1200. Paid $49. It was the cheapest one they had in stock. The others (all Netgear) looked more complicated and had positionable antennas and looked like overkill for what I was trying to accomplish.

It installed easily. The driver came on an included CD. I did not "turn off the internal card." Instead, the installation created a "WiFi 2" option which included a new listing of nearby wifi networks. This list, however, included my personal 5G network so I figured I was going to be all set to go.

However, this is the best it seems to want to do (this is a wifi speed test):

On the one hand I could be happy to think I've got twice the speed I was getting before this little adventure started. But I am still not anywhere near tapping the full potential of my service.

Any suggestions at this point? Do I need to turn off the internal card for any reason? Is the AMD chip the likely bottleneck at this point?

USB is never going to be that fast, because it's serial - that means it can also only do one thing at a time.

I would say that if you upgrade the internal card you'll probably get closer to 75ish mbps, but you really will need a faster/better laptop to see speeds like your wife is getting. I always caution folks from buying mid-range CPU's for this reason, as the 1-200 dollars you save doesn't end up being worth it after a couple of years.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Dave (and everyone else who has contributed here), MANY THANKS for ALL your input and your valuable insight and help.

I guess I am going to stand pat where I am and will eventually be upgrading when the time is right and the laptop starts getting buggy. Other than this, I'm quite happy with this machine. The best decision I made was getting the 1tb SSD. In the future, I'll be smarter about going higher-end for longevity's sake.

I usually find that it's the dumb things that go wrong first with laptops...things like AC jacks and such.

 

[David Norman]

Other than the speedtest results -- is there anything you can't do on this computer that you could do on your wife's with twice the speed.

Are you a gamer? I don't think I've read your name in the few game threads I've peaked at (not my thing)
Do you use this laptop for streaming and are you having problems with it that your HT or Wife's computer doesn't,
You aren't having to upload or download large files for any reason?

Are you going to return the USB since it's only bumping you a little

 

[DaveF]

From a practical standpoint, 50Mbps download is 4K streaming. If you’re doing a big OS update, you’ll wish for a faster connection. But for normal,use, I bet you’re fine. You’re probably more limited by your laptops CPU: websites are surprisingly complex and the lag we experience is often the time for the computer to process the HTML and not download speeds.

(Now, if you’re uploading photos or videos, that 11Mbps upload is not doing you any favors. )

 

[Mike Frezon]

David Norman:

Nah. I'm not a gamer and don't use my laptop to stream or anything.

But my webpages (on places like this forum) don't pop up quickly. There's a few second lag. And weirdly, things like calling up the emoji list can take several seconds. Compared to her laptop and my work desktop, there's an annoying difference.

I think I'll be keeping the USB stick as it gets me more than what I'd have otherwise--and onto the 5G. Besides our laptops, everything else in the house will likely be on the 2.4G.

I had dinner at my son's house tonight and he impressed me with his speeds via Verizon FIOS: 300+ on BOTH download and upload!