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kinkster

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 15, 2008
534
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With all these new black friday sales going on Iv noticed quite a few N WiFi routers on sale.

Is there anything I should know about draft N being used with the new Macbooks? Does draft N use more battery life? Are the range-gains really very great? And also does the N card in the Macbook support the 5Ghz frequency?
 
Get the Apple airport extreme, it's guaranteed to work. No need to worry about anything.
 
I'd imagine using N would use more battery life, its faster and more data transfer, kinda like with the iPhone, if your using 3G the battery goes down faster than if your using EDGE, as for compatibility, any N router you get should work, but i would check apples airport specifications to be sure before you spend money on a new router.
 
I'd imagine using N would use more battery life, its faster and more data transfer, kinda like with the iPhone, if your using 3G the battery goes down faster than if your using EDGE, as for compatibility, any N router you get should work, but i would check apples airport specifications to be sure before you spend money on a new router.

im not 100% sure, but i dont think that is entirely true. since wireless N is backwards compatible with all the other types of wireless...it wont necessarily use more battery life, since the airport uses the same amount of power no matter what, it just matters if you ARE using it or not. Unlike, the iphone 3G, it has two separate radios to accommodate edge and 3g, thats why 3g uses more battery life, because it is a more power hungry radio.
 
im not 100% sure, but i dont think that is entirely true. since wireless N is backwards compatible with all the other types of wireless...it wont necessarily use more battery life, since the airport uses the same amount of power no matter what, it just matters if you ARE using it or not. Unlike, the iphone 3G, it has two separate radios to accommodate edge and 3g, thats why 3g uses more battery life, because it is a more power hungry radio.

Wireless N does use more power!

This is because of MIMO technology implied, and the reason why its in draft specifications... MIMO stands for Multi Input Multi Output, and the reason it's in draft right now is because they havent found a limit to the maximum speed. You can technically have an infinite number of antennas and a limitless data transfer rate... Dual Band (2 antennas) can get speeds up to 600Mbps. That's 6 times that of an Ethernet cable... because you use more than one antenna, you WILL use more power... especially at a greater range.

Hope this helps.
 
With all these new black friday sales going on Iv noticed quite a few N WiFi routers on sale.

Is there anything I should know about draft N being used with the new Macbooks? Does draft N use more battery life? Are the range-gains really very great? And also does the N card in the Macbook support the 5Ghz frequency?

I have found that my MacBook works better in N mode with Apple routers like the Airport Extreme than other ones. All the current MacBooks support both 2.4 and 5GHz bands. In G mode it talks to just about everything. Range is better in the 2.4GHz band for N mode. Battery life is better in G mode but its not a huge difference unless you are doing a lot of data transfer.
 
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