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GENERAL_SMILEY · Apr 30, 2003, 09:17 AM

I have a 17Al - which I presume works well with an Apple base station, but my business partner has a Dell - any cards to reccomend - Type 1 or 2 apparently.

Would be great if he can use the G protocol as well, as I understand otherwise the whole network reverts to B.

Of course if anybody can reccomend a better solution for the basestation would be cool too.

Thankks in advance.

Timo · Apr 30, 2003, 09:54 AM

Some good info here: http://wireless-starter-kit.com/airportblog/

ghporter · Apr 30, 2003, 10:57 AM

So far, all I've heard about Dr. Bott's 802.11G antennas is bad. For that matter, people seem to have more problems with Extreme than with the original AirPort equipment as well.

Personally, I'd take advantage of the fact that a lot of manufacturers are dropping the prices of their 802.11b products, and stay with "B" until they at least get "G" standardized.

As for your partner's Dell, what model does he have? It makes a difference, since some (most) newer Dell laptops have a mini-PCI socket for a wireless card-my Inspiron 8200 does, and I found a Cisco 350 card for it for less than $70 delivered. It's 802.11b, but I don't have any problems with that.

GENERAL_SMILEY · May 1, 2003, 08:47 AM

Cheers guys, some good points here.

Further question for you, can normal non-apple base stations bridge like Airport extreme ones?

I have alot of space to cover, and it would be cool in the future to start laying down more base station to increase the range.

Finally does the Airport, extreme or not, have a good range in comparison with other makes?

ghporter · May 1, 2003, 09:50 AM

The wireless bridging an Extreme base can do is limited to Extreme bases. On the other hand, if you're not going to go with 802.11g, there are a lot of other products that cost less and have a lot of features that AirPort Base Stations don't. In particular, Linksys has just come out with a signal booster for their 802.11b access points and wireless routers. You may want to visit their site and see what sort of specs this box has and whether it could take care of your needs.

GENERAL_SMILEY · May 2, 2003, 11:16 AM

Mmm... At this rate I think I'm going to buy a few different models of basestation to test, keep the best one, return the others.

I'm thinking a linksys card for the PC - any good experiences?

Cheers for alll the help.

ghporter · May 2, 2003, 08:31 PM

In spite of what a lot of people say, I've had very good results from my orignial model WPC11 Linksys wireless PCMCIA card. It doesn't have the range of my Cisco Aeronet 350 mini-PCI wireless card, but the difference is minimal. Linksys has only gotten better at making these cards work, and they've just introduced version 4. A note on that: when you shop, make sure you READ THE VERSION NUMBER ON THE BOX. I've seen three different versions of the WPC11 on the same shelf at a BestBuy, and two different versions on the same shelf at a CompUSA.