[bac2mac]

I bought my blackbook about 6 months ago and have just moved into a new place were we use a linksys G router for cable internet. For some reason my macbook's wireless is really slow, and sometimes fails to load pages. The pc's on the network are fine and are a fast a it should be. Is this a common problem? How can i speed it up?? This is the first time i have had this problem with it. Thanks!

[dennisuello]

don't really have an answer for you, but i suspect that the antenna's in the new MacBooks & MacBook Pros are not as good. My wife's iBook get way better reception in the same spot that my brand new 15" MBP. my work ThinkPad works better as well.

[ghporter]

Au contraire. The antennas in the new laptops are great. It is NOT a fair comparison, though, to say that your ThinkPad has better performance, because the ThinkPad doesn't have a metalic case, which makes a difference with the MBP's antennas. My MBP works just as well as all the Dell, Toshiba, HP and Lenovo laptops around me at school.

What IS an issue is the latest and greatest wireless cards in these new laptops appear to have some driver issues. It's also important to note that Apple's hardware and drivers are very standards compliant, which is not something you can say about every wireless network you encounter-like at work or school. My school uses Cisco access points (VERY compliant) and I have great success. My son's school uses...something, I don't know what, but their coverage and speed are nowhere near as good, and performance suffers for it. Put a working MacBook next to a working ThinkPad and they should give you very similar connections if the network hardware is fully compliant. But you can't say that if the network hardware is not fully compliant, such as when the wireless router or access point is using one of those proprietary "108Mbps!!!" or "speed doubler!!!" protocols. Those don't even always work with supposedly matched proprietary cards, let alone standards-compliant cards.

[dennisuello]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Au contraire. The antennas in the new laptops are great. It is NOT a fair comparison, though, to say that your ThinkPad has better performance, because the ThinkPad doesn't have a metalic case, which makes a difference with the MBP's antennas. My MBP works just as well as all the Dell, Toshiba, HP and Lenovo laptops around me at school.

What IS an issue is the latest and greatest wireless cards in these new laptops appear to have some driver issues. It's also important to note that Apple's hardware and drivers are very standards compliant, which is not something you can say about every wireless network you encounter-like at work or school. My school uses Cisco access points (VERY compliant) and I have great success. My son's school uses...something, I don't know what, but their coverage and speed are nowhere near as good, and performance suffers for it. Put a working MacBook next to a working ThinkPad and they should give you very similar connections if the network hardware is fully compliant. But you can't say that if the network hardware is not fully compliant, such as when the wireless router or access point is using one of those proprietary "108Mbps!!!" or "speed doubler!!!" protocols. Those don't even always work with supposedly matched proprietary cards, let alone standards-compliant cards.

i am using Airport Extreme for my base station, so I guess, it's not very compliant.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by dennisuello 

i am using Airport Extreme for my base station, so I guess, it's not very compliant.

Then there's something else going on here. As I stated, my own MBP does great, even in comparison to plastic-cased laptops. My wife's iBook also does well, and the antennas in the MacBook appear to be at least as good as the ones in the iBook.

There are some issues to address-if you have the latest MBP, you might be encountering problems because of the driver for its (rather different) wireless card-and that $2 "enabler" for the "draft N" functionality may actually be helpful for you. (Note the hedging here-I don't know enough to say this one way or another.)