[60-hz]

Hi, i'm thinking about going out to buy an airport base station and card for my Ti Book 667Mhz Dvi model. I have read somewhere that the reception/signal is not that great on the Ti books?

Is this only with specific PowerBook models?

I will be using it at home only with my PowerBook and iBook. Thinking of surfing the web without cables sounds great. I have a 512Kb broadband connection, will i still get great download speeds?

[wallinbl]

Originally posted by 60-hz:
I have a 512Kb broadband connection, will i still get great download speeds?

The wireless speed will be faster than your Internet connection in nearly all cases. Even at degraded speeds due to bad reception, it's still faster. It will degrade down to 5.5 Mbps (from 11) and so on, but you've got a long way to go to get to 512Kbps.

[60-hz]

With my broadband connection i usaually download from the web at around 55Kb a sec. What do you reckon my average download speed from the web would be using airport?

[velocipede]

Originally posted by 60-hz:
With my broadband connection i usaually download from the web at around 55Kb a sec. What do you reckon my average download speed from the web would be using airport?

I've got a TiBook with an Airport card that I use for wireless web, and even when the signal is low I usually get decent speeds. When my signal is at least 50% I typically get d/l speeds of over 100 kb/s through my cable modem. Even when the signal is lower it doesn't seem to impact the download speed noticeable, at least until the signal gets very weak.

[yellow no.5]

Same here. Good speeds all around.

-yno.5

[wanderlust]

Just a note on my airport/TiBook experience.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked my TiBook, but the airport reception was relatively weak. While new and old iBook designs, many Wallstreets and a Pismos (as we have a mac household and many friends coming over with various airport equipped laptops) would get good reception, me and all of my Ti friends suffered. The base station is set up in a middle room of the house. I would invariably have difficulties working in some of the rooms, others I could not get a signal for more than a few moments before it would die. This really sucks when you're using iChat since you're continually logged in and out automatically. Anyway, I could not get a signal downstairs in the office while everyone else could. My bedroom would generally give me two lines in the airport icon. Sometimes three, sometimes none.

Now with my BigAl, there is no place in the house that I don't get five solid lines, always: the office, the bedroom, the kitchen, outside on the deck and yes, even the bathroom! Much, much better user experience. Much happier user.

All this to say keep in mind that the architecture on the TiBook airport antenna was not the greatest. I believe that on the AlBook, there is an antenna up the side (or one on either side) of the screen, which makes for a stronger reception.

However, when I did have a small amount of reception, I was still able to use it. It was just the pain of falling in and out and not getting to take full advantage of the full portable part of my partable mac that was difficult to stomach.

[MusicalTone]

No problems here with my Ti 15" SD and AE base station. Have a wirless newtowork running between base, my PB and a Sony Vaio running Windows and the base feeds broadband over the network. I hear that if you plug a cable in you can get even better distances than AE!

[wallinbl]

Originally posted by MusicalTone:
I hear that if you plug a cable in you can get even better distances than AE!

328 feet

[MusicalTone]

what about with repeaters/hubs?

[mrmister]

I can tell my Ti doesn't get as good range as my wife's iBook, but no problems in my house getting great coverage--the signal weakness hasn't affected me in a real-world way. It'd be nice if there were 4 bars rather than 3 in the front room, but there's no change in speed for me.