[PinkMarshmallow]

I live in an old house with solid double brick walls and lots of rooms off a central passage - which translates into a wireless range nightmare. To top it off i am using a 18 month old aluminium powerbook (G4 1.67), whose wireless reception (via an built in airport card) is woeful. 

I am using a Netcomm NB5580W router. My brothers Acer laptop has access to the signal all over the house, so i know the issue is with the reception on the mac not the strength of the routers signal.

I want to have access to the internet all over the house, so which of the following options will give me the best range:
1) A high gain antenna e.g. Linksys HGA 7T or DLink Ant 0700
2) A PCMCIA card e.g. Sonnet or the Netgear (with an Orangeware 3rd party driver)

[rjt1000]

The main problem with wi-fi reception on the PB is that the antenna is shielded by the metal skin. I think you will find good results with a PCMCIA wifi card so that the antenna is external. Just be sure it has OS X drivers. This one from OWC (Macsales) should work without drivers and is modestly priced.

[mduell]

PowerBook wifi range has always been poor. The titanitum PowerBooks were the worst, followed by the aluminum PowerBooks. The titantium Thinkpads and aluminum MacBook Pros have much better reception than any of the PowerBooks, so I don't think it was just materials.

I'd go with the big antenna. All of your other laptops will get a boost (range and performance) out of it, too.

[ghporter]

Any card that provides an external antenna will be a plus, and as mduell says, a big antenna is a good idea.

Apple spent too much time on "styling" and not enough on antenna theory when they came out with the TiBook, and they only somewhat improved with the AlBook. My MBP has at least as good WiFi performance as my son's Dell laptop, so I think they managed to get the problem figured out-good to know when you eventually replace your PowerBook.