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Advice on my networking plans, please
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: New York, NY
Status:
Offline
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I would like to set up a small network between my desktop Mac (a dual 1.25 1st generation MDD) and my PC laptop (Dell Inspiron 5000e -- about 3 years old), and also with the Wi-Fi card of my Sony Clie (it's Sony's proprietary card). I mostly want to share my broadband cable connection, but it would be great to also get my Canon i850 printer shared with the laptop as well. I would want the desktop to have a wired connection to the router, and the laptop and Clie would be wireless.
I was thinking of Airport Extreme, though I know I wouldn't be able to take advantage of the higher speeds with the Clie (and the laptop, too?). Someday I'm going to replace the laptop with a Powerbook, so I'm trying to think ahead.
My main concern is whether my non-Apple components (especially my older laptop) will be able to take advantage of most of the features that Airport offers, or will I actually get more compatibility out of a third-party router?
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I much appreciate any suggestions.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: May 1999
Location: San Jose, CA
Status:
Offline
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The AirPort Extreme would work fine for you here.
The PCs wouldn't lose anything by being behind an Apple-branded router.
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Gods don't kill people - people with Gods kill people.
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Grizzled Veteran
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: New York City
Status:
Offline
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I have done similar things, and recently modified my setup. Air port extreme is great, but remember, this will really only benefit you for transfers WITHIN your home network, not with the internet. 802.11b (original airport) is usually faster than most broadband connections - my 15" TiBook maxes out my cable modem over airport. I have an Orinoco access point (uses the same hardware as the original apple basestation, and can be configured with the apple airport utility), now connected to a new netgear 8 port router vpn firewall. I like having the extra ports available for wired use, which the airport extreme station lacks (though you could always add a cheap swtich if you needed).Also look at the third party wireless G (airport extreme) routers - netgear, linksys, dlink, etc - I have found that the wireless stuff all works pretty well together, with a little tinkering...and the third party stuff is cheaper than apple's...
Feel free to email me for specific questions...
Lee
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iPhone 3G 16Gb
24" 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo iMac, 4GB/320GB/256MB
12" AlBook 1Ghz/768Mb/80Gb/Combo/AX
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