GRT-815M & 3Com® OfficeConnect® Wireless 108Mbps 11g XJACK PC Card

Since the model comes without a wireless card, this post might not be so relevant but I hope to be at least useful. There is a mini PCI card slot that one can put in a wireless card, but all the available options were (still are) quite expensive. Because of all this I have decided to buy this particular model PC Card (PCMCIA): 3Com® OfficeConnect® Wireless 108Mbps 11g XJACK PC Card Product #: 3CRXJK10075.

To make the long story short, after installing the card and the drivers I have of course updated to the latest available drivers on the vendor's web site. The wireless client utility that comes with the package is nothing special, quite boring but I guess there are worse and at least it works... sort of...! I got sporadic and random Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) that was pointing the ar5211.sys driver as the cause for the crash. Needless to, say that reinstalling the drivers was not fixing the issue. So I have started to dig the Net for solution and... ...I have found nothing official.

Well, what I found is an unofficial distribution for the Atheros chipset based cards. I have always second thoughts about unofficial software, but in this particular situation I did not have much choice left. Anyway, googling for or visiting this address ftp://lizzi555.dyndns.org/Download/WLAN/Atheros/ will help you to find and install newer version of the driver that will solve the crashing problem and a new wireless client utility that is way way better than the one from 3Com.

GRT-815M - cleaning from dust II

This will be the second time writing about how to clean the computer from dust. Look first in the previous post for the details since this time i will only add some pictures on how to open the computer.

1. Loose the screw from the left-hand side of the computer.

2. Slide the plastic part left to release it from the body and then lift it up. On this stage one can clean pretty much most of the dust from the main fan that is easily accessible. To reach the second one, unscrew the screw marked on the figure and proceed to step 3 to lift the keyboard.

3. One more screw and you can release the keyboard (you don't need to disconnect it), lift it and you will have full access to the fans. .








Here I have found better guide for PCG-GRT100 that goes to extreme to remove the fans from the main board. It is a perfect illustration how to disassemble each part, step by step, so one can decide to what extreme to go.

P.S. On the pictures above the computer is really in working state. The purpose was to convince the readers that the whole procedure is not difficult at all as long as you have some basic technical skills and confidence. Don't try to experiment like this the first time you open your notebook. The proper (and safe) way is to remove the battery before you open the computer. I keep doing it my way, because I think it works better to clean the dust. Once the dust is blown by the spray it is sucked and blown away by the fans, so at that point I will just advice you to be careful!

GRT-815M - battery maintenance

There are many guides on the net how to maintain the battery of your laptop. Anyway, the purpose of this post is to give real data as a reference for the GRT815M model.

I use my desktop replacement always running on "AC_Power". From time to time I perform some "exercises" of the battery (twice a month) by fully discharging the battery. So this is the situation after 3 years and 4 months:

The "Charge Cycles" counts are not accurate. They are at least double since I have used the computer several times on battery, anyway. The first sign of degradation appeared on the third year. On another laptop (HP) and the same scheme for the battery exercises the battery is already showing degradation after 6 months...
I have to admit that the GRT815M seems to take special care in this particular situation. The HP computer charges automatically the battery every now and then when it is below some threshold, while I have never seen the GRT to charge the battery during the 2 weeks period between the exercises - this is almost equal to keep the battery outside the computer.

As concerns the usage of the computer:

It is always plugged in the power outlet. I turn it on only when I use it - usually every evening for about 6 hours. If I check the time counter of the HDD it says 7986 hours which is close to 333 days constantly working but this doesn't reflect significantly the battery maintenance since the battery is charged even if your laptop is off but still plugged.

GRT-815M - Norton AntiVirus slow-down

If you still keep your preinstalled Norton AntiVirus and you have upgraded to Windows XP SP2 you may experience serious performance decrease of your old computer. Possible solution for you might be to install/replace your memory to 1GB. Anyway, the reason for the slow-down comes especially from the AntiVirus program. PROPER REMOVAL (uninstallation) of the program gives you back all the glory of your otherwise powerful computer. Uninstalling the NAV might be tricky so, take some time to read some posts on the net about the problem.

http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=61013
http://basconotw.mvps.org/SymRem.htm

These posts are a little bit outdated but they will give you a clear idea about the situation. Last year (2006), I used the latest NAV uninstall tool and that one did well. There was still some traces after that but some manual intervention helped as well. I have to say also that this did not help the same way on another computer, when replacing NAV2007 with SAV2006 did not work for the firewall. So, proceed with caution. To summarize: if it works for you and you don't experience performance problems - keep it. Otherwise you may consider replacing it with AVG free (that was my choice). AVG also slow down a little bit the computer but it is way better than NAV. So, that is all from me.

GRT-815M - direct hard disk performance control

For use only with Travelstar disk drives (VAIO PCG-GRT815M model is shipped originally with a Hitachi Travelstar 80GB hard disk drive). Use Power Booster to directly control advanced battery life extender power settings.

I have used it only to confirm that I am running on highest performance profile (Power save: OFF) - wont help you much to extend the time running on battery... You will still have at least one fan that will continue to run constantly.

It could be useful if you use your computer as mobile to protect the hard disk by "parking" the heads when there is no I/O activity. The default performance profile (if you didn't change anything on the hard disk configuration) parks the heads after about 5s without I/O activity. This tool might actually help you to easily avoid the annoying clicking sound from the hard disk that is produced during the parking process of the heads - just slide toward performance to increase the time before the heads are parked. The full performance profile will never park the heads.