[zucchiniboy]

I know that's not how it's supposed to be, but my new 12" PB seems to have so-so airport connection. Now, I don't know if it's a difference between 802.11g and b or what, but I've got MacStumbler running on both machines, side by side, and here's what I get:

PowerBook 12" 1.5Ghz, Airport Extreme

network name 1, channel 1, Signal 48, Noise 0
network name 2, channel 3, Signal 39, Noise 0

PowerBook 15" 667Mhz, Airport

network name 1, channel 1, Signal 71, Noise 52
network name 2, channel 3, Signal 60, Noise 50

Now, that doesn't seem right, does it? Well, I do notice that my new PB has 0 noise, but the signal shouldn't be that much worse, should it? I tried reseating the AEX card, unplugging and replugging the antenna. Both are running 10.3.9.

Any thoughts? Or is this normal because of Extreme vs. non-Extreme?

This behavior happens at both work and home, with the 12" consistently worse than the 15, and both worse than a 12" iBook (as expected).

Thanks,
Jason


12" PowerBook G4 rev. D, 1.5GHz, 768MB; Mac OS X (10.3.9)

[SEkker]

No way a properly functioning Al PB12" is not going to beat a TiPB at airport reception. I did an array of side-by-side tests with my TiPB 667MHz (was the SVGA model) and a Pismo, an original clamshell iBook, one of the white G3 iBooks, a Lombard with a PCMCIA wifi card, and later compared with my revA PB17. The only laptop that did NOT best the TiPB was the Lombard with the PCMCIA card without an external antennae. By the way, the best reception was with the original (and still ugly to my mind) clamshell iBook.

I am pretty sure the Al PBs all have reasonably similar wifi reception.

My recommendation: take your machine to an Apple store and put it next to one of their models and see if it gets the same reception. It sounds to me like your antennae connection is either broken or loose.