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dar77777 · May 22, 2003, 01:36 AM

Is the Airport reception really that bad? How much more power consumption would a PC card eat up?

Eug · May 22, 2003, 11:03 AM

My TiBook's reception is pretty good, but not quite as good as my old iBook.

I don't think a PC card would improve the reception (since the Airport can make use of the internal built-in antennae), but even if a PC card did improve things slightly, you would still not want it. Having cards stick out the side is a serious pain in the @ss. Also, since Apple builds its OS around its own equipment, you're more likely to have driver/software issues with a 3rd party card.

I will NEVER buy another laptop which requires a wireless card that sticks out the side.

Paul Huang · May 22, 2003, 11:21 AM

Let's say the Titanium's reception is not as good as the lame thing that sticks out, it allws you 180� of reception on both sides, which is far batter than just on one side.

One-sided reception is always worse than a slightly-weaker reception on both sides.

Having a PC-card-slot wireless card does not necessarily provide better reception.

TAZ · May 23, 2003, 09:18 AM

My reception with the Airport card has been good. I have however only used it with my own home network and havent used it at Starbucks, or airports and such. Base station placement and orientation and channel selection have been the biggest improvements to date. I had a PC Card on my Wintel machine for a while and it was a pain. I was constantly knocking the little antenna attachement off, worrying about breaking it... You will also have the issue of third party drivers and their quality. I dont think its worth it. You can always try an airport card for 30 days (atleast if you buy retail) and return it if it sucks with your set up.

tooki · May 23, 2003, 03:37 PM

Well, at least on early TiBooks, which had notoriously bad reception, using an external PC Card provided a MASSIVE improvement in reception.

Add to that that you can get PC Card 802.11b cards that have extra-strength transmitters, if you like.

The TiBooks' antennas are horribly weak and badly positioned. If you can live with the protrusion of the PC Card (it's a significant annoyance, IMHO), then go for it. Otherwise, get an Airport card.

tooki

Angus_D · May 23, 2003, 04:25 PM

Some company now does external antennae for TiBooks that use the AirPort card if the reception bothers you.

Paul Huang · May 23, 2003, 10:07 PM

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Some company now does external antennae for TiBooks that use the AirPort card if the reception bothers you.

I used to get sporadic connection when I am separated at 15� along the wall (too many studs that block the signal), but after I added the Dr. Bott antanna, it's been flawless--even though the June issue of MacWorld says that they didn't observe any significant difference yet.

Another solution is the D-Link D-614+ base station to boost signal, it is just $60 after rebate/tax, which is still $40 less than the Dr. Bott antanna.

A few words of warning: it does not pass AppleTalk. Belkin's and Asante's units do handle AppleTalk. A really old unit from Netgear did, but that stuff is old.

vmarks · May 23, 2003, 10:31 PM

Tibook:

Remove battery.
massage the airport antenna on the inside side of the battery bay.

Replace battery.

Some users have noticed improved reception.

Alphy · May 24, 2003, 03:37 AM

Originally posted by Eug:

I don't think a PC card would improve the reception (since the Airport can make use of the internal built-in antennae), but even if a PC card did improve things slightly, you would still not want it. Having cards stick out the side is a serious pain in the @ss. Also, since Apple builds its OS around its own equipment, you're more likely to have driver/software issues with a 3rd party card.

Eug has a good point about using Apple's own hardware to avoid hardware/driver issues.

His opinion about the external antennae is wrong. Your reception will significantly improve if you use an external antennae if you have interference around the place you're using your laptop.

If you're going to go third party/pc cards you will need to buy OS X drivers for full support of the card.. particuarly if you want to use peer to peer wireless networking. If you're using a base/router you can just go with the open source free drivers. Just do a search on these forums as there has been past threads.

israces · May 24, 2003, 08:55 AM

Originally posted by vmarks:
Tibook:

Remove battery.
massage the airport antenna on the inside side of the battery bay.

Replace battery.

Some users have noticed improved reception.

I can vouch for this. I even went so far as to wedge a litle piece of cardboard in there to keep the antenna in place. Huge improvement.

danbrew · May 24, 2003, 10:23 AM

I used an external (3Com) card with an original Ti500 and while it was ok, having the card stick out the side is a major pain. Plus there's the fact that you can't use that pcmcia slot for anything else. I now use an airport card and and very pleased. The reception may not be as great, but it doesn't really impact me as 99.8% of the time I'm 10 ft from the WAP.

I'd say go for the airport card.

iWrite · 11:05 AM

I've never really had problems with reception. What I've done is to mount my ABS up high in a corner and threaded the cords/wires through the wall down to the appropriate plug-in spots. (Behind the drywall). It looks like a smoke alarm up there. I noticed that when it was lower I had more problems, but now the reception is outstanding.

We're using the TiBook(s) for my spouse and myself and our son has an iBook and an iMac. All of them have the Airport Cards in them.

Interesting other item to note: We've personally found that the AEBS is quite terrible in terms of working correctly. We had terrible repeated corruptions that involved directly working with Apple engineers in an attempt to get it to work correctly. Turns out that Apple admits that the "handshake" between the AEBS and *some* ISPs is not compatible with the internal modem in the AEBS.

Now, here's the interesting thing: Using both the older "Graphite" and "Snow" models in a test we've discovered that the "Graphite" model works better!

We didn't believe our results so we brought him another set (Graphite and Snow) from corporate and put them to the test again. Once again the Graphite ABS outperformed the Snow ABS. Additionally, the "reset" time for the Graphite ABS is about 7 seconds versus up to 30 seconds for the Snow ABS.

Sometimes newer is not always better. We were retiring all of the Graphite ABSs in corporate offices in favor of the Snow ABSs and were planning to buy the new AEBSs, but now we're keeping them and forgoing the new AEBS purchases.

Food for thought.

Eug · May 24, 2003, 11:11 AM

His opinion about the external antennae is wrong. Your reception will significantly improve if you use an external antennae if you have interference around the place you're using your laptop.

Well, it depends on what external card I get I suppose. The average external card doesn't have a flip up antennae or anything, just a small curled up one crammed into the end of the card.

Reception is quite variable with those. I've tried two on my PC laptop. Reception was OK, but not great. At best it was slightly better than my TiBook, but it certainly wasn't a big improvement. I hear the Cisco stuff is better but that stuff is $$$$.

With my TiBook Airport (and Netgear access point), I can still get reception 3 (wooden) floors down in my garage, while inside my car.

With my TiBook Airport, I cannot get any usable reception 2 floors down outside my (metal) front door. I could get any usable reception from my PC laptop either, or even my iBook.

But just as importantly the biggest pain about the PCMCIA card is that it stuck out the side. It just gets in the way of everything, it always feels like you're gonna break the damn thing off. (The antenna is housed in flimsy plastic, perfectly placed to act as a lever.)

Thus, Airport is good enough for me.