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Hello there,
Is anyone running Arch on a X200T or X200?
I would be interested in your power consumption and your settings to achieve that consumption.
I get around 10 to 11W with tlp installed (takes into account all powertop recommendations), PHC reduced voltages and with completely reduced brightness.
I find my result pretty disappointing and expected to get less than 10W. Thus I am interested in your results.
Thanks!
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10.5W IDLE (nothing except powertop is running) with CCFL backlight (level 8 of 15), Core2Duo P8600 (ondemand governor), wi-fi enabled. Fresh machine and install, no Xorg, no tweaks so far, just acpi and tp_smapi installed.
PS We need a wiki page with users reporting their power consumption! Just to get notion how much power a particular model should drain.
PSS orschiro does your unit suffer from so called "cpu whine"?
Last edited by masteryod (2013-10-06 22:12:56)
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PSS orschiro does your unit suffer from so called "cpu whine"?
I read this and though "WTF?", but then I found this in our very own forums. Maybe you want to post there to help this OP, or just discuss the issue?
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masteryod wrote:PSS orschiro does your unit suffer from so called "cpu whine"?
I read this and though "WTF?", but then I found this in our very own forums. Maybe you want to post there to help this OP, or just discuss the issue?
Thanks, I think I saw that thread. Since then I learned to accept the issue because apparently there is no cure. Spinning HDD and occasional fan are a nice distraction from it. Such a shame because with SSD this machine would be completely noiseless!
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10.5W IDLE (nothing except powertop is running) with CCFL backlight (level 8 of 15), Core2Duo P8600 (ondemand governor), wi-fi enabled. Fresh machine and install, no Xorg, no tweaks so far, just acpi and tp_smapi installed.
PS We need a wiki page with users reporting their power consumption! Just to get notion how much power a particular model should drain.
Thanks for your report! Since my initial post I did some more experiments.
I was able to reduce power consumption to around 5W with disabled wifi and CCFL backlight (level 3 of 15).
PSS orschiro does your unit suffer from so called "cpu whine"?
No it doesn't but probably because I am having a X200T with the low voltage CPU. I hardly ever hear the fan. But I am using thermald. You may want to give it a try?
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I know it is meant to but I can't say using thermald seems to have made the slightest difference on my machine - the fan still goes almost constantly. This doesn't especially bother me but it does seem a bit odd.
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I'm not sure how I would do that, to be honest. So, no.
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X200s with SL9300, CCFL and SSD here. I use Arch 64 vanilla kernel and i3wm. I usually get around 9-10W idle, and I would say around 12W average consumption for what I'm doing(WiFi Internet + Video + Office work and some SSH). I usually keep the brightness at 10-14. I have a 71Wh battery(not original, but it does report to tp-smapi, and it is also made by Sanyo(at least according to /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/manufacturer)) and I can get around 6-7 hours out of it. If I disable all connectivity and dim the screen I can get more, but I'm fine with what I get at normal brightness. I actually charge my battery to 80%, and don't go below 20%, to prolong life. When I need more than 3-4 hours of battery life I make it charge to 95-100% beforehand. My advice about the fan noise: install thinkfan and set it up properly(my fan turns on only occasionally, but around 90-95% of the time it is off, and the processor stays ~45 degrees). I have had this laptop for a year, and actually the power consumption is higher since the middle of September(10-12W idle, 13-14 average). I guess the kernel has something to do with it, but I have other stuff to do now, and I haven't played with downgrading the kernel.
This is my /etc/thinkfan.conf for fanless operation:
(0, 0, 56)
(1, 50, 60)
(2, 52, 63)
(3, 56, 66)
(4, 58, 67)
(5, 60, 68)
(7, 63, 32767)If you have a HDD you have to account for it, since it has lower temperature limits than SSDs.
About the so called "cpu whine": I hear a whine from the upper right part of the keyboard. It is gone when I turn off the screen => it is the CCFL power supply. I also hear quiet cracking sounds from the fan-vent even when the fan is off. I have no clue about where they come from, but I wouldn't call them a "whine".
I haven't undervolted yet, but I plan on doing it when I have a spare afternoon ![]()
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@palm
Thanks for your tips on extending battery life! I usually charged to full capacity and did not know that it is impacting lifetime.
@cfr
See the PHC article for undervolting: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PHC
It is not much of a hazzle to undervolt.
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I forgot to mention that I use laptop mode tools for powersaving.
@orschiro
I learned that from http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/arti … _batteries
Also if you plan on using the laptop with the charger plugged in all the time you can even make the battery charge to 50-60%. I can't find the link for it right now, but the essence of it is that when your battery is at 30 degrees C its life is shortened faster if it is charged more. If you have some spare time you will learn a lot of usefull info from that site, I highly recommend it.
I made a little script to aid me in changing the charge thresholds. Call it with one parameter and it sets the stop charge threshold with it and start charge threshold 4 percent below it. Call it with two parameters and it sets stop and start charge thresholds respectively. Call it without parameters and it displays some usefull info(you will have to look at the source to make use of it the first time:)
It spits out some errors if you are plugged in but it works nonetheless. If you change the tresholds while plugged in your battery will charge all the way up to 100% no matter what parameters you give it(same if you set it via /sys interface manually, it's not the script that is buggy). I know it is not the most elegant script you've seen, but I am not a programmer :)
#!/bin/bash
bold=`tput bold`
normal=`tput sgr0`
time8_raq=$(echo "scale=1;`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_capacity`/8000" | bc)
time8_raw=$(echo "scale=0;$time8_raq * 60" | bc | awk '{ if ($0 ~ /\./){ sub("0*$","",$0); sub (".$","",$0);} print}')
time8_h=$(( $time8_raw / 60 ))
time8_m=$(( $time8_raw % 60 ))
time8="${time8_h}h ${time8_m}m"
time10_raq=$(echo "scale=1;`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_capacity`/10000" | bc)
time10_raw=$(echo "scale=0;$time10_raq * 60" | bc | awk '{ if ($0 ~ /\./){ sub("0*$","",$0); sub (".$","",$0);} print}')
time10_h=$(( $time10_raw / 60 ))
time10_m=$(( $time10_raw % 60 ))
time10="${time10_h}h ${time10_m}m"
time12_raq=$(echo "scale=1;`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_capacity`/12000" | bc)
time12_raw=$(echo "scale=0;$time12_raq * 60" | bc | awk '{ if ($0 ~ /\./){ sub("0*$","",$0); sub (".$","",$0);} print}')
time12_h=$(( $time12_raw / 60 ))
time12_m=$(( $time12_raw % 60 ))
time12="${time12_h}h ${time12_m}m"
time14_raq=$(echo "scale=1;`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_capacity`/14000" | bc)
time14_raw=$(echo "scale=0;$time14_raq * 60" | bc | awk '{ if ($0 ~ /\./){ sub("0*$","",$0); sub (".$","",$0);} print}')
time14_h=$(( $time14_raw / 60 ))
time14_m=$(( $time14_raw % 60 ))
time14="${time14_h}h ${time14_m}m"
time16_raq=$(echo "scale=1;`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_capacity`/16000" | bc)
time16_raw=$(echo "scale=0;$time16_raq * 60" | bc | awk '{ if ($0 ~ /\./){ sub("0*$","",$0); sub (".$","",$0);} print}')
time16_h=$(( $time16_raw / 60 ))
time16_m=$(( $time16_raw % 60 ))
time16="${time16_h}h ${time16_m}m"
time18_raq=$(echo "scale=1;`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_capacity`/18000" | bc)
time18_raw=$(echo "scale=0;$time18_raq * 60" | bc | awk '{ if ($0 ~ /\./){ sub("0*$","",$0); sub (".$","",$0);} print}')
time18_h=$(( $time18_raw / 60 ))
time18_m=$(( $time18_raw % 60 ))
time18="${time18_h}h ${time18_m}m"
timeest_h=$(( `cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_running_time` / 60 ))
timeest_m=$(( `cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_running_time` % 60 ))
timeest="${timeest_h}h ${timeest_m}m"
timeestnow_h=$(( `cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_running_time_now` / 60 ))
timeestnow_m=$(( `cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_running_time_now` % 60 ))
timeestnow="${timeestnow_h}h ${timeestnow_m}m"
powerest=$(echo "scale=1;(`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_capacity`/(`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_running_time`/60))/1000" | bc)
powerestnow=$(echo "scale=1;(`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_capacity`/(`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_running_time_now`/60))/1000" | bc)
remaining_capacity=$(echo "scale=1;`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_capacity`/1000" | bc)
voltage=$(echo "scale=3;`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/voltage`/1000" | bc)
temperature=$(echo "scale=1;`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/temperature`/1000" | bc)
last_full_capacity=$(echo "scale=1;`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/last_full_capacity`/1000" | bc)
design_capacity=$(echo "scale=1;`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/design_capacity`/1000" | bc)
cycle_count=$(cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/cycle_count)
# fanspeed
fanraw=(`cat /proc/acpi/ibm/fan|grep speed`)
fan=${fanraw[1]}
if [ $# -eq 0 ]
then
echo ${remaining_capacity} Wh \| ${voltage} V \| ${temperature} C \| \(${last_full_capacity}\/${design_capacity}\|${cycle_count}\) \| \{`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/stop_charge_thresh` `cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/start_charge_thresh`\} \| `cat /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness`
echo ${powerest}W est \| ${timeest} est \| ${powerestnow}W now \| ${timeestnow} now \| ${fan} rpm
echo ${time8}@8W \ ${time10}@10W \ ${time12}@12W \ ${time14}@14W \ ${time16}@16W
fi
if [ $# -eq 1 ]
then
echo "$1" > /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/stop_charge_thresh
echo `cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_capacity` mW \| `cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/voltage` mV \| `cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/temperature` C \| \(`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/last_full_capacity`\/`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/design_capacity `\) \| \{${bold}`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/stop_charge_thresh`${normal} `cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/start_charge_thresh`\} \| `cat /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness`
fi
if [ $# -eq 2 ]
then
echo "$1" > /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/stop_charge_thresh
echo "$2" > /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/start_charge_thresh
echo `cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/remaining_capacity` mW \| `cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/voltage` mV \| `cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/temperature` C \| \(`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/last_full_capacity`\/`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/design_capacity `\) \| \{${bold}`cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/stop_charge_thresh` `cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/start_charge_thresh`${normal}} \| `cat /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness`
fi
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@cfr
See the PHC article for undervolting: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PHC
It is not much of a hazzle to undervolt.
Thanks. I don't use acpi-cpufreq, though, so I think this is not an option for me.
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I learned that from http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/arti … _batteries
Also if you plan on using the laptop with the charger plugged in all the time you can even make the battery charge to 50-60%. I can't find the link for it right now, but the essence of it is that when your battery is at 30 degrees C its life is shortened faster if it is charged more. If you have some spare time you will learn a lot of usefull info from that site, I highly recommend it.I made a little script to aid me in changing the charge thresholds. Call it with one parameter and it sets the stop charge threshold with it and start charge threshold 4 percent below it. Call it with two parameters and it sets stop and start charge thresholds respectively. Call it without parameters and it displays some usefull info(you will have to look at the source to make use of it the first time:)
It spits out some errors if you are plugged in but it works nonetheless. If you change the tresholds while plugged in your battery will charge all the way up to 100% no matter what parameters you give it(same if you set it via /sys interface manually, it's not the script that is buggy). I know it is not the most elegant script you've seen, but I am not a programmer
If I understand this correctly this is big pile of wrong conceptions, sorry.
First of all, you care about power cycles. Cycle is: battery empty -> charging -> battery full -> discharging.
You don't want many cycles.
You don't want short (not full) cycles.
You don't want to leave battery unplugged, not powering your laptop at very high charge level for a long time.
You don't want to leave battery unplugged, not powering your laptop at very low charge level for a long time.
You don't want to keep battery like most laptops do: charging up to 100% letting it drop just a little bit and starting new cycle right there when it's almost full.
You don't want battery to deploy it entirely (even though 0% you see it's not physical 0% it's still healthier for battery to not reaching minimum discharge state it allows you to).
You want nice cycle range about 20-30% min and 80-90% max. Simple right? Yes, but the detail is in charging. You just don't let it charge whenever you plug AC adapter. That's what thresholds are for.
If you work mainly with AC adapter plugged, consider this scenario:
Charging ->
battery is at 80-90% ->
laptop stops charging ->
unplug ->
let it drop to 60-70% ->
plug AC adapter ->
no charging here! = battery is at healthy 60-70%, power bypass battery cycle, and battery is "on pause" ->
work ->
but you need to go for a minute somewhere with your laptop! ->
unplug ->
work, move around, battery drops to 40-50% ->
return to your desk and plug in AC adapter ->
battery is still not being charged because it doesn't crossed min. threshold = you are still at same cycle!
After some moving around your battery will eventually drop bellow min. threshold. Now focus: you plug it in and let it charge fully up to max threshold . Laptop will automatically stop charging.
That's what I do. And Thinkpads allows you to do it with ease. You just echo your min and max threshold. You can take your laptop of the desk with you many times and as long as you stay within min. and max. threshold you're still at one cycle count (until completing cycle with charging, then next cycle begins of course).
*laptop batteries from technical point of view should be called accumulators, I think
Last edited by masteryod (2013-10-10 19:46:49)
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While most of what you said is true, there are several things you got wrong.
1. You don't want to charge your battery to 100%. Never! In fact you care not about percent, but about cell voltage. Cell voltage above 4.1V is considered stress voltage for a 3.7 Li-Ion cell. 4.2V is 100% and 4.1 is about 90% on most batteries. You can easily watch the cell voltage for the groups of cells in your battery by:
cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/group*_voltage
3948
3948
3947
02. Small charges and discharges are actually not considered cycles. My father's thinkpad runs windows, and when I run ThinkVantage Power Manager and set charging thresholds for automatic battery lifetime optimisation the thresholds are set to 90/86. This supports my view.
cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/cycle_count
16after almost a year of use. I have lost none of my design capacity, even though I make around 6-7 10% cycles a day. If what you say is true I have made around 2000 cycles already and my battery should be at 70% of its design capacity, or even less. It is not. Instead it is at 102.38% of its design capacity, and has been at exactly that since I bought it.
[root@deathstar/root] cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/design_capacity
71280
[root@deathstar/root] cat /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/last_full_capacity
729803. Accumulator is a more general term. Rechargable Li-Ion battery is a more specific one. The battery is composed of electrochemical cells. A battery in general means an array, a group of similar things aranged in some particular way.
Last edited by plam (2013-10-10 21:21:13)
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Just to say that not all Thinkpads let you do this as that module is incompatible with some of them (such as mine). As far as I know, there is no way of doing this on my machine. I wish there were as I would like to preserve the life of my battery (and pretty much use it in the very-bad-for-life way just because that's how I need to use the laptop) but the module doesn't support my hardware, even though it is a Thinkpad.
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@cfr, I have not tried this, but apparently you can set the thresholds of the battery levels by using the acpi_call module. There is an AUR package for it, as well as something called tpacpi-bat which appears to just be a script that writes values to the acpi_call /sys directories. There is a link on the tpsmapi wiki page about it. But the acpi_call-git PKGBUILD is, well... ugly.
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@cfr, I have not tried this, but apparently you can set the thresholds of the battery levels by using the acpi_call module. There is an AUR package for it, as well as something called tpacpi-bat which appears to just be a script that writes values to the acpi_call /sys directories. There is a link on the tpsmapi wiki page about it. But the acpi_call-git PKGBUILD is, well... ugly.
Thanks. I discovered this after I posted earlier.
However, I'm not at all sure that I trust doing it this way. In theory, it sounded reasonable but the package seems... problematic. See https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=171172 (and this is after patching the PKGBUILD so it doesn't try to apply a patch already applied upstream).
I don't really understand this PKGBUILD, especially not the division of labour between the build and package functions. Moreover, it does precious little error checking. It "built" modules for all of my kernels even when 2 out of 3 had no headers installed. Even with just the standard and LTS kernels and with the headers installed, I'm pretty sure it is doing something very seriously screwy as I end up with identical modules for the two kernels.
I don't trust acpi_call-git enough to install it so I haven't gone any further with the tpacpi-bat(-git) package.
I'm not sure my battery is doing too badly, considering. It is at about 2/3 of its design capacity and is 20+ months in use. Given the life of laptop batteries and the fact that I can do essentially nothing to preserve it, I figure that's not terrible. And I'd rather this than depending on that package, I think. If it were just a regular application, it would be different, but kernel modules are another story.
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I tend to agree with that thought process there. I could go through and fix up that PKGBUILD and install it, but it is a mess and I don't feel motivated enough to do that just to have finer control over how my battery charges. Batteries are meant to be used, and use will inevitably decrease their life over time. So spending lots of time trying to gain control over the process only to slightly delay it just doesn't seem worth it to me. (Plus I have three batteries)
I have to admit though that it seems as though these new fangled lithium-ion batteries seem to hold their capacity much much better than the old white (late 2006) MacBook I had. So this could be one of the reasons why I don't have much interest in fighting its decline.
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Yes. i'm sure my late 2005 PowerBook was in much worse shape 20 months in even though Apple sent me a new batter after a few months (on the grounds that the original was liable to burst into flames).
I was sort of curious about how it should be done and looked at the packaging guidelines for kernel modules but they didn't really explain much of anything - except to separate modules from other stuff. But I gather a single package build ought not to be attempting to build modules for multiple kernels, just for a start.
EDIT: I think, too, that in many cases trying to do this stuff by software can do as much harm as good, depending on the quality of the firmware and the hardware setup. So often it turns out that stuff people are doing to save this or help that is counterproductive now that the this comes with such-and-such or the that is designed to operate in a way that conflicts with so-and-so. Doesn't mean it's the case here, of course, but it is interesting how many times that seems to happen.
Last edited by cfr (2013-10-11 00:50:24)
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You should take a look at one of the 3rd party modules that are provided in the official repos for guidance on how things are typically done. My machine seems to be happier with the r8168 module than the r8169, so I use that, and have modified the PKGBUILD to also work with my git kernel. So if you use ABS you can check those build sources out. Or simply use the web interface to view it on git.
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Thanks. That's what I wanted - I just couldn't think of a module name. (I don't have any modules installed which aren't just part of the kernel packages.)
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(I don't have any modules installed which aren't just part of the kernel packages.)
You're lucky then. If I put the Intel Centrino 2230 back into my machine, and let the ethernet use r8169, I could also go without the headers packages, but I have a broadcom bcm43228 in my machine right now, which requires the wl module. It was the only card compatible with my machine that was dual band.
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I'd had enough trouble with the PowerBook and Linux that I made sure to upgrade the wireless to Centrino and saw the integrated graphics as an advantage. I'm not sure my sd card reader works as it is but since I don't own a sd card, that's not much of a problem. The ethernet certainly did work though I've not tested it lately.
EDIT: My PB needed broadcom blobs, among other things. But it is the nvidia card which is the real problem. That's just not possible at all. (Well, it is minimally possible if you don't mind no output to external monitor, no ability to dim the screen and never sleeping or hibernating the laptop.)
Last edited by cfr (2013-10-11 02:31:59)
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I have Realtek RTS5229 Sd Card reader. At first it didn't work, and I had to use the module provided by Realtek (though to this day I still have yet to really use it). But around 3.8 the support was merged into the kernel with the rtsx_pci module. So now it works great... I think.
I too saw Intel integrated graphics as a definite advantage. Especially since my machine is Ivy Bridge, and the HD4000 is actually provides pretty decent performance. I am not a gamer, so the idea of having some ridiculously powerful nVidia or ATI card just seemed like overkill, not to mention the fact that it would have been a much bigger PITA to get working properly.
Unfortunately, when I ordered my machine I got it with the Thinkpad b/g/n card, which turned out to be the infamous Realtek RTL8188/8192 card (I think that was the model number, its the one that uses the rtl8192ce module). I had read on the interwebs that the Thinkpad cards were actually Broadcom which enjoyed in-tree kernel support. And in fact, there apparently is a single band Thinkpad card that is a Broadcom chipset that works out of the box. But that is not what I got. So that is how I ended up buying just about every card that is compatible with my machine from ebay. But fortunately, there are a couple cards that are both compatible with my machine, and work well with Linux (thoughI have to use the proprietary wl module if I want dual band).
Edit: BTW, I'm sure cfr knows this already, but just for the record, my machine is a Thinkpad Edge E430.
Last edited by WonderWoofy (2013-10-11 02:39:46)
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I couldn't have told you the precise model number, I don't think. But, yes. I'd read about the issues with the default wireless card option so I just upgraded it to the Centrino when I ordered. It didn't cost very much to do that and I figured it would be worth it (and I'm happy with that decision!).
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