Ti 15" and wireless distance

[shoemaker_m]

Ive read a lot of posts where people knock the Ti because of its limited airport signal. Im currently a PeeCee user with a Dell Inspiron. I have a WiFi PCMCIA card that works wonderfully. I have my access point on one side of my house and I can surf without any interuptions on the other side of my house, on a different floor even. I was a MacMan a long time ago using System 7. I want to "upgrade" to a PowerBook but am worried that it wouldn't work wirelessly as well My questions are.

How bad is the Ti Wireless range?

Is it a function of the airport card installed in the notebook or the airport basestation?

Do you feel I would have a problem with my current setup(I would continue to us the access point I have)?

Thanks in advance.

 

[shakespeare]

I started a thread on this a while back which you might find helpful. I still haven't installed the AirPort card, so I can't help you through experience.

 

[shoemaker_m]

Did you end up putting an airport card in your Ti 400? What were your results.

 

[altair]

range

I use my airport card in my 1ghz SD Tibook, but with a Lynkys wireless router, so this info might not be the same as with an Airport.

So I decided to do some testing just for you. To start, you must understand that the router is in the basement, so basically it is surrounded in concrete, other than the roof, and a few windows. While this isn't the smartest placement, it isn't my router, my roommate uses it in his room (the basement) so I am just hijacking his signal.

Alright, so in my room, which is two floors above him, I get a pretty bad signal, one or two bars out of 4, however it works...sometimes. Down a floor the reception is perfect, full signal. And of course in his room it is great. In front of my house, which is on the opposite side of the house from the access point, there was little or no signal, which could be attributed to the bunch of concrete. On the back of the house, so basically line of site from the access point, I had a signal of 3 or 4 bars for about 150 feet, and 1 or 2 bars for another 25 before I ran out of room.

In conclusion, for me, this is great, I can sit in the living room and have a great signal, can be in the backyard and have a great signal, but all the concrete screws me up. I dont think that the signal on my machine is any less than my roomie's machine (which is a Dell) , we both did the test together, and got about the same results, although he did get a better signal in my room.

Hope this helped.

~altair

 

[Rajj]

The TiBook’s airport rage does suck, and if I were you, I would wait until the 15.4 PowerBooks is released!!

In addition, the airport card is installed in the notebook, not the Base station.

 

[yzedf]

reception for the TiBook sucks because of the antenna and it's connection.

 

[rideahyperLite]

i heard that the airport base station isnt as good as others tho.. i found some stuff about it in this article

We tested the AirPort card with both a 3Com access point and Apple's AirPort Base Station. 3Com's access point puts out a much stronger signal.

 

[eatbacon]

I have a very similar set up to altair's. I have a 500MHz TiBook (supposedly the worst of the lot for range) with an airport card and a linksys wireless access point. The linksys is in the basement. My bedroom is two floors up. I however get a great signal upstairs. There are a few dead spots in my house, but that is to be expected. For the most part it works great.

On the other hand, you can get many wireless pcmcia cards to work with mac. If you already own one then you can't be too bothered by having something sticking out of the side of your computer and that will totaly solve the range problem. I tried a linksys card and it did get somewhat better signal strength, but not enough for me to justify having an external card.

 

[ExoticFish]

a friend on mine just got a 12" albook and we had his sitting next to my 1GHz TiBook and the range wasn't that much better. I was surprised actually at how little difference there was. Although his is airport extreme which I am jeleous of.

 

[BigJayhawk]

TiBook Airport Reception

First off -- actually BOTH the TiBook AND the Airport base station have WiFi cards in them (open the base and you'll see -- not that I'm recommending that).

Second, the TiBook reception sucks (relative to the iBook for example which is still the standard) because the antennaS (2) are low on the sides of the screen AND are shielded by TITANIUM which is not designed for that purpose -- obviously.

Third, I LOVE my TiBook and Airport (although my wife's iBook gets much better reception.)

But FINALLY, just wait until the AluBook 15" or get an elusive 17" (if you can afford) for (once again THREE reasons:

First off, the reception has been fixed and CLAIMS are that it rivals or beats the iBook (which is awesome) due to the facts that the antennaes are at the TOP of the screen and they are NOT SHIELDED by Titanium.

Second, you are now at Airport Extreme which will do both "B" and "G" WiFi (speedier).

Third, (and most importantly for your concern), you can get a base station with an ANTENNA JACK which supports antennae that can theoretically give you reception of 3 times Airport Standard up to MILES and MILES depending on what you want to spend and how much line of sight you have.

Whew!

 

[shoemaker_m]

Re: TiBook Airport Reception

First, thanks for the info. Obviously it has to communicate with laptop transmitters. I left that one be though.

Second, I don't have an ibook so I don't know what that means exactly. My PeeCee setup will go from 11mbps, to 6, to 2 or something like that. To tell you the truth, 2 is fine as long as its consistant. Heck its still faster than my DSL line. I don't forsee transmitting large files over the wifi network. Now I back up my laptop over WiFi which is slower than when I connect via ethernet, but what the heck. Im not waiting for it. I start my backup script and walk away.

The whole point of asking these questions was to save the additional cash between the 15 Ti and 15 Al. The 17 would be too combersome for me I think. Very cool though so Im still way impressed by the 17.

At this point I don't reeally care about 802.11G, B is fine for my purposes.

Id like to use my current access point.

Thanks for your comments.

 

[shoemaker_m]

Thanks again to all that posted. I appreciate the advice.