[sketch]

I've read in a few forums how the aluminum case of the powerbooks reduces reception of wi-fi.

I'll be getting my rev d in March but I was wondering if anyone who has recently purchased the rev d powerbook, and received it, noticed if Apple made any improvements on this issue?

[markponcelet]

Originally posted by sketch:
I've read in a few forums how the aluminum case of the powerbooks reduces reception of wi-fi.

I'll be getting my rev d in March but I was wondering if anyone who has recently purchased the rev d powerbook, and received it, noticed if Apple made any improvements on this issue?

The problems lie in the conductive case (for reception) and in the weak transmitter of the standard Airport card. Improvements will only come when a new airport card is released. As far as reception, well, Apple has also made its base stations pretty weak.

I read somewhere that a third party has developed a hardware addition to turn an existing Airport base station into a 500 mw transmitter. Use one of those, and I don't think you'll ever get fewer than two bars again.

The only reasonable way to get improved wireless reception and connectivity is to use a PCMCIA card, unfortunately.

[Pilotkev]

Originally posted by markponcelet:
The problems lie in the conductive case (for reception) and in the weak transmitter of the standard Airport card. Improvements will only come when a new airport card is released. As far as reception, well, Apple has also made its base stations pretty weak.

The only reasonable way to get improved wireless reception and connectivity is to use a PCMCIA card, unfortunately.

I concur with this. My 400Mhz TiBook was so bad, I bought an Orinoco PC Card and have been very happy every since. However, I am wanting to upgrade to a 12" Aluminum PBook and was hoping Apple had fixed this problem. Have they not?

Can I "bridge" two wireless routers together in my house. I have a Belkin router which allows bridging but says it only works with a Belkin wireless access point. Any chance it might work with an Airport Express?

Kevin

[markponcelet]

Originally posted by Pilotkev:
I concur with this. My 400Mhz TiBook was so bad, I bought an Orinoco PC Card and have been very happy every since. However, I am wanting to upgrade to a 12" Aluminum PBook and was hoping Apple had fixed this problem. Have they not?

I could make some guesses as to why not, but they'd be major conjecture. I think that FCC restrictions on early wireless cards kept them down at 30 mw. Either that, or the standard suggested 30 mw because it thought that would be all that people would need.

I think FCC increased the ceiling on transmission power back in October. Current limits are at 500 mw, I believe.

Originally posted by Pilotkev:
Can I "bridge" two wireless routers together in my house. I have a Belkin router which allows bridging but says it only works with a Belkin wireless access point. Any chance it might work with an Airport Express?

Sorry. No idea on this one.

Mark

[jzdziarski]

I don't know what you guys are complaining about. My Rev. D gets better signal than my Orinoco Gold card. The antennas in the screen make up for any weak signal the card might have (if there is any). I only get about 80% signal on my orinoco at the same location.

[amazing]

I used 2 wireless pc-cards in my Ti-400, a Cisco Aironet 350 11.b and a Buffalo Airstation 11.g. The Buffalo is supported natively in Panther, great reception. The Cisco software still works great in Panther (and OS 9), and allows you to set up to 100 mW even in OS 9. Some current cards are said to go to 200 mW.

For Apple to say they have wireless reception with the Ti was somewhat of a joke, Later models were said to get better reception, but I doubt it.

Also, a 3rd party WAP like the linksys or the Buffalo Airstation has about 20% more range than an AEBS because of the external antennas or better antenna arangement. I've used a graphite, an SMC Barricade and now the Buffalo Airstation. Much better than the AEBS according to other user threads, just check around. Even MacWorld mag acknowledged it in an article they did soon after the AEBS came out.

Macintouch.com has said that their new 15" wireless reception wasn't thrilling. You can no longer access the AE card in the 15" and 17" models, so if you suspect that the antenna plug has come loose, you can no longer get to it. It has to go in to Apple. The AE card in the 12" is still accessible, I confirmed this today at a CompUSA with the help of one of the techs--just flipped it over, took out the battery and there was the antenna plug and the card.

As more users receive their new PBs, the wireless range answer will become clearer.

[zzarg]

my Rev.A 12" with Airport Extreme internal is awesome compared to the DLink cards in my (two) WinXP laptops.
I never have any problems at home working in the den, living room or garden on the Mac, but woe betide any attempt to step past the front door with the external card equipped machines...
I have a Billion 7500G WiFi/DSL gateway and an Airport Express repeater/audio link so there is fairly good coverage here (and they play very nicely with each other)
On the whole with about half a dozen laptops with various cards compared to the PowerBooks with internal WiFi we've had working here over the last 6 months... the PowerBooks win hands down !

[sketch]

Well these are different results I'm getting here. Most of you say you have great reception. But I never heard about the FCC regulation before. Sounds interesting.

[waterbuck]

My TiBook (older model 667 MHz) generally had poorer reception than my wife's Dell laptop with an external Orinoco gold card. However, by situating the Airport Base Station (snow) high in the house and optimally (ie middle of hallway, just above a stairwell down to the basement where my wife works), the TiBook did decently around our 3 bedroom house and even out on the back porch.

I don't yet have the AlBook (on its way) but I read (and it's implied above) that Apple housed 2 antennas in the screen,which would seem to be better than 1 antenna in the base. So in theory, despite the metallic case's disadvantages, it should be workable in small homes if the base station is optimally stationed.

Certainly with my TiBook on the road, ie in airports and coffeeshopts, I never have any problem at all getting reception.

waterbuck

[Voch]

Originally posted by waterbuck:
However, by situating the Airport Base Station (snow) high in the house and optimally (ie middle of hallway, just above a stairwell down to the basement where my wife works), the TiBook did decently around our 3 bedroom house and even out on the back porch.

Hmmm...I'll have to try that. I have a TiBook with the original AirPort base station that I keep on the bottom shelf of my TV stand (probably not a good place...at least it's on the other side of the house from the microwave). I must run the cable modem cable to the spare bedroom someday...

Voch

[waterbuck]

We had to hire a former telephone company worker to run the ethernet cable from our DSL modem (situated in a closet) to the Airport in the middle of the hallway. It was a lucky thing we found him. It costed around $80.

[markponcelet]

Originally posted by waterbuck:
Certainly with my TiBook on the road, ie in airports and coffeeshopts, I never have any problem at all getting reception.

No problems that you know of, anyway. When you're on the road, the only part of the signal that you can see is the incoming signal. If your (meager 30 mw) signal can't get back to the antenna very well, you'll be running at speeds slower than you could be with a high-power transmitter.

Mark

[markponcelet]

Originally posted by waterbuck:
Certainly with my TiBook on the road, ie in airports and coffeeshopts, I never have any problem at all getting reception.

No problems that you know of, anyway. When you're on the road, the only part of the signal that you can see is the incoming signal. If your (meager 30 mw) signal can't get back to the antenna very well, you'll be running at speeds slower than you could be with a high-power transmitter.

Mark

[amazing]

Originally posted by waterbuck:
My TiBook (older model 667 MHz) generally had poorer reception than my wife's Dell laptop with an external Orinoco gold card. However, by situating the Airport Base Station (snow) high in the house and optimally (ie middle of hallway, just above a stairwell down to the basement where my wife works), the TiBook did decently around our 3 bedroom house and even out on the back porch.

Apple did supposedly improve the wireless reception after the 1st gen Ti got such bad publicity. My Ti-400 was so bad I got a Lucent range extender antenna to attach to my graphite. That got me about an additional 5 feet. Frankly, it was only when I got the Cisco Aironet 350 that I was smiling again. For example, I originally had no reception on the patio only one bedroom away from the graphite. With the Aironet, not only did I have reception, I had no loss of bandwidth. In other words, I could do a bandwidth test right next to the graphite and do a bandwidth test on the patio and they were virtually identical. Normally, throughput drops off as you get further away from the base station, but with a good wireless pc-card, that range is much extended.

By the by, I always shudder when users talk about "bars of reception" because it's the throughput you have to look at...so if you have any friends who're using a wireless pc-card, borrow it for tests in your Ti-667. You'll be amazed.

[TailsToo]

My TI seemed to have a better range than my AL. I only get three bars in my apartment, and I get 4 with the TI. Same thing at work. I was able to work fine with my TI, but the new unit only gets two bars and often drops connections. I wish I could get to the Airport Card and get to it to see if changing it out would help.

[amazing]

Originally posted by TailsToo:
My TI seemed to have a better range than my AL. I only get three bars in my apartment, and I get 4 with the TI. Same thing at work. I was able to work fine with my TI, but the new unit only gets two bars and often drops connections. I wish I could get to the Airport Card and get to it to see if changing it out would help.

Download MacStumbler on both laptops and compare reception from same locations. Frankly, you may have to take the AlPB to Apple to see what they can do about improving reception. At least you'll have some figures to give Applecare, if you decide to call them.

Unless you want to use a wireless pc-card...

[slffl]

I wish I knew what these people who are getting poor reception with their Al books use otherwise. My 17" Rev A gets amazing reception compared to any other pci cards with external antennas that i've used on my PCs. I've never used any other apple notebook, but compared to my experience with PC wi-fi devices, my powerbook beats them all.

[pat++]

TiBook reception was pretty bad. AlBook are much better, although not as good as iBooks.

[wunderkind]

I did not notice any difference in reception between rev. B and rev. D 12".

[ncsurfer]

My rev. D 15" gets the same reception as my roomates 14" iBook G4 1.33.

[amazing]

Originally posted by ncsurfer:
My rev. D 15" gets the same reception as my roomates 14" iBook G4 1.33.

Just to verify this in some numerical fashion, how's about downloading macstumber on both laptops. That'll give you the numbers regarding connection to the base station.

Then for a throughput test, load comparable browsers (be sure to use the exact same version and whatnot, for example, the same version of firefox) and then go to this website, or something similar. Be sure to hit the buttons at the same time, and maybe even average three separate tests.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Bandwidth_me...-7254_7-0.html

Throughput on the internet varies from second to second, so this is by no means scientific, but it's good for Starbucks bragging rights.

The last time this was done by MacWorld mag was years ago (unless I've missed reading about more recent reviews?). The iBook did do better, and the other significant scoop was that the Apple AEBS dropped off faster in range than other 3rd party base stations. As I recall, the best 3rd party router had 20% more range than the AEBS.

[bleee]

I have the latest 12 inch powerbook and I can safely say that my old 600mhz iBook has way better receptions with both side by side I always get a solid 4 bars on my iBook and between 2 and 3 on my powerbook. This is from the third floor of my house and the wireless router is in the basement. I am using 802.11b in my house currently. When I first received my powerbook I was getting signal drops if I don't have "Use Interference Robustness" turned on.

[TailsToo]

Originally posted by bleee:
I have the latest 12 inch powerbook and I can safely say that my old 600mhz iBook has way better receptions with both side by side I always get a solid 4 bars on my iBook and between 2 and 3 on my powerbook. This is from the third floor of my house and the wireless router is in the basement. I am using 802.11b in my house currently. When I first received my powerbook I was getting signal drops if I don't have "Use Interference Robustness" turned on.

You can find 802.11g routers on sale all the time for less than $20. You might want to replace your b. G has a better range.

[J_Anderton]

I just want to chime in here and say that my wireless reception is rock solid on my new Rev. D 12" PB.

I get no less than three bars and I'll say it's on four bars 85% of the time.

[amazing]

Originally posted by TailsToo:
You can find 802.11g routers on sale all the time for less than $20. You might want to replace your b. G has a better range.

I'm curious why you say that 11-g routers have better range than 11-b routers? Last review I saw on this was from Macworld mag just after the AEBS came out. From my recollection, the 11-b routers had better range, and the 3rd party 11-b and 11-g routers had maybe 20% better range than any Apple BS regardless of flavor because of their external antennas. In addition, MacWorld mag noted that 11-g range dropped off faster than 11-b range as you got further away from the base station.

I have an SMC Barricade 11-b and a Buffalo Airstation 11-g router. The SMC gets a few more points in MacStumbler, but that's probably insignificant. The Buffalo has great internal antennas so that even an external Lucent Range Extender antenna doesn't extend the range.

[waterbuck]

my memory, could be faulty, is that the data transfer rates were better with Extreme Airport, but not the range.

[Garage81]

im posting this on my brand new, just picked up today, rev D 15" pbook.

i have 4 bars now, and my ibook that is sitting next to me is getting 5 bars.

it gets slightly worse reception than my 12" ibook, but it is still great compared to my windows XP wifi card (sitting at 70ish%)

[Steve Bosell]

is there any way to boost the airport reception, increase the 30 mw maybe? My rev d powerbooks gets 1-3 bars where my iBook would always be at 4 bars. I don't want to have a wireless card sticking out the side though.....

[waterbuck]

I think it is never optimum to put an antenna in a metal-painted box.
A typical workaround for an Airport Extreme Base Station is an external antenna.

MACWORLD's review of antennas for aiport extreme

[amazing]

There are only 2 ways to improve wireless reception: At the base station, either with a model featuring better antennas or adding antenna to your present model, or at the receiving end, either with a PMCIA wireless card or something like a QuickerTek antenna (ugly?)

Why add an expensive antenna to the AEBS when buying a 3rd party base station for about $40 will give you almost certainly the same benefit? My present Buffalo Airstation received top-marks for range in reviews, and it equalled my SMC Barricade (if not slightly better.) Both of these gave immensely better range than my old graphite, even hacked as it was with a Lucent Range Extender antenna.

On the receiving end: My present rev C 12" has adequate reception and the rev D is said to continue with good reception--plus, in both of these, you can still access the AE card to check if the antenna is still securely plugged in. Unfortunately, the 15" is a different story: Even MacIntouch.com mentioned the poor reception in their initial review of their new version (newest version of 15" is rev C.)

With my previous Ti-400, 10.3.8, I used both the Cisco Aironet 350, where you could up the power to 100 mW, and the Buffalo wireless card. The Aironet uses separate software which worked fine in Panther (no guarantees for Tiger, natch) and the Buffalo card was supported natively by Panther. I've heard of other wireless pc-cards that go as high as 200 mW, but haven't seen any reviews (in other words, does 200 mW provide any range benefits or is it simply macho posturing?)

Here's the difficulty with the Buffalo card: You have to remove the internal card, since the OS can't distinguish between internal and pc-card. And, remember, you can no longer access the card in the newest rev C 15"?

The Aironet registers with the OS as en1, whereas the internal card is en0. This allows you to setup different locations, one location where the internal card is turned off and the pc-card is authorized, another location where the internal card is turned on and where you've ejected the external card. The downside is that you're dependent on Cisco updating their drivers in a timely manner if any new version of the OS breaks the connection. Cisco's been pretty good, so far...?

[adamberti]

Originally Posted by TailsToo

My TI seemed to have a better range than my AL. I only get three bars in my apartment, and I get 4 with the TI. Same thing at work. I was able to work fine with my TI, but the new unit only gets two bars and often drops connections. I wish I could get to the Airport Card and get to it to see if changing it out would help.

Count me in too. I'm in a University Residence with Nortel Routers throughout the building. My 1 Ghz TiBook got significantly better reception that my brand new, one week old AlBook.

Test:

Powerbooks facing with left side to closest station:
CNET Test
(Mac Stumbler: 65-75)
Ti1: 1891.5 Kbps
Ti2: 1548.4 Kbps
Ti3: 1626.8 Kbps
Av: 1688.9 Kbps

(Mac Stumbler: 35-38)
Al1: 672.4 Kbps
Al2: 80.8 Kbps (appeared to stall or time-out almost, but this happens regularly)
Al3: 996.1 Kpbs
Av: 583.1 Kbps


Powerbooks facing with screen towards closest station:
CNET Test
(Mac Stumbler: 69-75)
Ti1: 1606.3 Kbps
Ti2: 1662.6 Kbps
Ti3: 1382.1 Kbps
Av: 1550.3 Kbps

(Mac Stumbler: 44-47)
Al1: 638.4 Kbps
Al2: 1210.3 Kbps
Al3: 1102.7 Kpbs
Av: 983.8 Kbps

My one thought is that the network here is a hybrid A/B as far as I understand. Would that negatively affect my G? The tests were done on floor level with the station being one floor down (but at the top of the wall so only 3 or 4 feet vertically lower and maybe 50 feet away.

Thoughts?

[amazing]

adamberti: wow, that's really bad reception! My only thought is to take to an Apple Store, is you're near one, perhaps the genius could take a look at it. Could be that something's wrong with the internal antenna (and since I assume it's a 15" newest rev, you can't check the antenna connection from within the battery compartment...a step backwards by Apple.)

[striker100]

If the problem is wireless reception at home get one of the new MIMIO wireless routers.

[adamberti]

Originally Posted by amazing

adamberti: wow, that's really bad reception! My only thought is to take to an Apple Store, is you're near one, perhaps the genius could take a look at it. Could be that something's wrong with the internal antenna (and since I assume it's a 15" newest rev, you can't check the antenna connection from within the battery compartment...a step backwards by Apple.)

No Apple Stores in Canada yet... I don't always trust the local resellers either... So I think I might do a few more tests. I can go to other places on campus and compare the wireless. I can goto my office and compare it - and I can goto a friends house and compare it.

I just am curious if the fact that it is an A/B network causes any sort of issues with reception. Probably not, but it may interfere with speed?

[waterbuck]

I saw this quote

If the problem is wireless reception at home get one of the new MIMIO wireless routers.

what is a MIMIO wireless router?

Thanks

[gametime10]

Do you have to use additional software/drivers to run a wireless PC card (ie: the Orinoco Gold cards)?

[alpa]

Originally Posted by gametime10

Do you have to use additional software/drivers to run a wireless PC card (ie: the Orinoco Gold cards)?

Yes, the Orinoco Gold Card is based on the Atheros chipset. (While the Airport Extreme is based on Broadcom chipset). To use any Atheros chipset based wireless card, you need to get the driver from Orange Ware (http://www.orangeware.com). Unfortunately, the orangeware driver only supports Static WEP (no 802.1x/WPA, etc). I have used the following Atheros based card on my PB with the Orangeware driver:

Cisco
Proxim
Linksys