Comments on: kogan agora wireless performance (VT6656 Via Arena adapter)

By: Mike Brown

Mike Brown — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 02:17:24 +0000

I picked up a USB wireless stick for $24 from MSY in Ultimo. (Dick Smith and co wanted $50 for one).

I now have much better wireless performance under Ubuntu and Windows. The stick connects to hotspots that the internal card doesn’t even see.

MSY actually had a wireless stick listed for only $12, but had none in stock when I visited.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:31:24 +0000

Hi Kayno,

Thank you for the reply 4 hrs sound good. I ran the wireless under Linux and under Windows 7 and the performance was about the same…. not good was very easy to manage in linux though. The sound however is much much better under windows 7 – you can actually hear it…

By: Mike Brown

Mike Brown — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 08:30:15 +0000

@Kayno,

That doesn’t explain why wireless performance under Windows is so much better than Ubuntu. Have you compared this yourself?

By: kayno

kayno — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:21:49 +0000

Hi Michael

your test (swapping the eee’s wifi card into the agora) adds more weight to the antenna being at fault in the agora.

I get just under 4hrs with the 6 cell battery.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:39:23 +0000

Hi, I have one of the Agoras that were going cheap with the 3 cell battery. I also have one of the original 7″ eeePC’s. The only complaint I have about the Agora is the wireless. I noticed that the wireless on my 7″ eee was way better than the Agora so seeing I was going to retire the eee I took the wireless card out of the eee and put it in the Agora, no real improvement in performance, could still see the base stations but couldn’t connect reliably.. I am running windows 7 on the Agora and it works excellently… I swapped the wireless back and now when I want to use wireless I use a USB NETCOMM modem…. with which I get slightly better performance than the wireless on the eee. Can any of you tell me what battery life you get out of the 6 cell?
Cheers & thanks for the information… Michael

By: Mike Brown

Mike Brown — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:02:17 +0000

I’ve just taken my Agora Pro away for the first time. It’s only about a month old, so it has the newer wireless card.

I too, was thoroughly unimpressed with the wireless performance, getting either weak, slow signals or hotspots that I knew were there simply not appearing in the list of network connections at all. This was using Ubuntu 9.04 and also 9.10 Release Candidate.

Out of desperation, I tried a Windows partition, installed with the drivers that are available on the Kogan site. I was rewarded with a dramatic improvement in performance. A hotspot at Sydney airport was showing as 30% under Ubuntu, and was pig slow and kept disconnecting. Under Windows, it showed as 80% and was giving nice and fast download speeds. That’s on the same machine, sitting in the exact same seat. The same scenario was repeated in the Gold Coast.

This is embarrassing for a Linux fan to admit, but I can only report what I saw.

By: kogan sent me a replacement wireless network mini card « kogan agora netbook

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 13:33:13 +0000

[...] the problems I had connecting to wireless networks overseas with my kogan agora netbook, I emailed kogan support and explained the issues I had been [...]

By: kayno

kayno — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:25:27 +0000

Hi Mason

You are probably right – if two different cards under-perform a USB dongle, than the antenna is the most likely problem. I wonder though if there could be some other issue, poor shielding, problems with the mini-pci express slot, pci bus, etc…

Hopefully I can get my hands on the new wifi card, and test it out and see if i have any more luck…

Cheers
Kayne

By: Mason

Mason — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:40:35 +0000

No I haven’t actually opened it but what else could it be?

By: kayno

kayno — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:07:40 +0000

Hi Mason

Yep – I have contacted Kogan, and looks like they might send me a replacement out. Will see how it goes.

Looking at the comment from Diesel, the newer card (seems to be a realtek) is still being out performed by a USB dongle (and i would have thought the internal card would have had a better antenna than a dongle).

be interesting to see the results for the realtek card in ubuntu or even windows, however Diesel’s tests were complete and included the belkin dongle on gos, which still outperformed the internal card.

Mason – have you pulled apart the kogan to check the antenna placement/details?

Diesel – I have sent you an email with my address to send the photos too – thanks for the comprehensive tests and comments too!