10.6.5 and wifi issues

Since I upgraded to 10.6.5, my MacBook Pro (Early 2006) cannot connect to my USR9110 (802.11 g) access point.
From 10.6 on, there's been always troubles when resuming after sleep, but now even at startup the connection goes timeout.

All other devices (an iPhone,an iPad and a MacBook Pro (Late 2006) with 10.5) work perfectly.

I tried rebooting, changing the wifi channel, updating the access point firmware, turning on and off airport, resetting the SMC, switching to WEP, switching to WPA, switching to unencrypted. Nothing changes, connection timeout.

MacBook Pro 1,1, Mac OS X (10.6.5), early 2006

Posted on Nov 11, 2010 5:53 AM

Aug 5, 2012 9:12 AM in response to ctmurray

I accept that there are MANY threads in MANY forums about wifi issues for MBAs and I am rather late in coming to this particular one but am having the same very slow response problem on my late 2011 MBA utilising the latest Lion software.

This may sound really weird but when I hold my laptop in a 'portrait' position - i.e. on its side - then my speeds shoot up.

Using Thinkbroadband.com to test my speed, I can consistently go from very slow download speed (often as low as 100kbps! when the MBA is in its normal position) to in excess of 15Mbps (when the MBA is on its side). The table below shows 6 consecutive tests alternating between portrait and landscape modes.

Date	Day	Downstream	Upstream	Connection
Speedtest Results
	05/08/12 16:54	Sun	10480 Kbps	934 Kbps	home PC
	05/08/12 16:53	Sun	1435 Kbps	893 Kbps	home PC
	05/08/12 16:50	Sun	9750 Kbps	980 Kbps	home PC
	05/08/12 16:49	Sun	1121 Kbps	933 Kbps	home PC
	05/08/12 16:47	Sun	9445 Kbps	980 Kbps	home PC
	05/08/12 16:45	Sun	1080 Kbps	985 Kbps	home PC

I have tried all of the other proposed solutions on every forum and none have worked so far. But this seems to have done the tick - albeit it is totally impractical. I read about issues with the aerial in the screen half of the laptop so this may fall into this category.

Any thoughts or can someone else try this 'solution' and see if using the MBA on its side has similar results with their own machine?

Cheers