[bohdanz]

I'm thinking of buying the Quickertek antenna for my Powerbook G3.

If you have one for either the Powerbooks, does it make a difference.

I can pick up very weak wifi connections in my neighborhood, not enough to surf online inside the house - and wonder if this will help. Most of these connections are unprotected according to macstumbler. I've used them but only when walking about twenty feet outside the front door.

Thanks.

[amazing]

Don't buy the antenna: Get a 3rd party pmcia wireless card instead. You'll probably have better range without the hassle of the antenna sticking out your pc-card slot.

which wireless card depends on what system software you're running and possibly which PB G3.

If you're still running OS 9, get a Cisco Aironet 350, which has software and drivers for both OS 9 and Tiger as well as Panther. If you're already running Panther, get a Buffalo AirStation 54g card, model # WLI-CB-G54A for $30 from target.com (web only)

http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html...sin=B000099O5Y

It uses the Broadcom wireless chip, which means it natively supported in Panther without any add'l software, plus it supports appletalk over wireless, which most other wireless cards don't (except for Apple's.) If you go to pricegrabber.com you'll see the cheapest price they find is $48.

[bohdanz]

I already have an Apple airport card in the G3 - but am trying to surf off neighborhood wifi's.

That's why I'm thinking of the Quickertek.

[amazing]

Originally posted by bohdanz:
I already have an Apple airport card in the G3 - but am trying to surf off neighborhood wifi's.

That's why I'm thinking of the Quickertek.

I guess what I was trying to say was that a wireless card in your PMCIA slot would give you better wireless range than the internal airport card. Of course, you won't know till you try it, but Target does have a generous refund policy. You don't even have to take the airport card out, you just have to create different locations, one that uses the internal card, and one that uses the pc-card. (NOTE: I used this location trick in OS 9 when I first got my Aironet, and it worked fine. It should work in Tiger or Panther, but I no longer have an internal card to verify that.)

Testing the throughput would involve using bandwidth measuring sites like the one at cnet (use google to find it.)

Also, the Buffalo card (which I use with my Ti-400) has a connection for using an external antenna. I've got a Lucent Range Extender antenna left over from use with a graphite ABS, which has the right fitting. Interestingly enough, it doesn't seem to give any better range than the card by itself.

There are some tests that seem to show that an 802.11b wireless card has better long-range reception than the 802.11g cards. To put it another way, the wireless reception of a g-card drops off faster than that of a b-card. Again, you won't know till you try it.