Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

original airport in new ibooks?

D

DarkSonicYouth5

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 7, 2004
12
0
Greetings forum rats,
I'm looking at getting a 12 inch ibook pretty soon. In my house, I have a Windows machine and I'm going to set up a wireless network and use the Windows machine as my gateway so I can use my cable modem with the ibook. I saw refurbished original airport cards on the apple site and was wondering if I could use the regular airport instead of airport extreme because I'm only using it for internet access and not inter-computer data transfers. Thanks for any help.
 
Wow, that's lame. I was hopin to save a few bucks but it looks like I won't be able to do that here. You know what this means...TO EBAY!
 
careful...

Be wary of ebay airport extreme cards...they are there for some bad reason (usually). Better off getting a refurb from the apple store. Any way, refurb is only going to save you 20 bucks or so.
 
A lot of people are under the misconception that they can use either card in the computers. Some computers use regular Airport Cards, some use Extreme Cards. They're designed to take one or the other, but not either.
 
Original cards are using a PC card style, and were connected in a variety of fashion to the chipsets.

Airport Extreme uses mini-PCI and is connected to a PCI bus.
 
TMI!

Dude, way too complicated. Macs take one card or the other, and there is only one way to plug them in. They all go inside the computer (at least for those made within the past 3 years or so).
 
Originally posted by DarkSonicYouth5
Wow, that's lame.
Click to expand...

Lame? They're different cards, they're not interchangable, and you don't have either one anyway. So you're out an extra $20--big deal.

Refurbished AE card from apple.com is $79--free shipping. I just looked up AE cards on Ebay and you'll pay about the same--only with the Ebay unknown factor added.
 
Still it would be nice to have the backwards compatibility. But I guess it doesn't work like that. The only reason I asked in the 1st place was because I'm trying to save as much money as possible(as I'm sure all of you guys try to do) and I figured I could go with the cheaper option because I'm not doing relly big data transfers between computers and my cable modem only tops out at about 1.5 Mb per second anyways, so the original Airport would be more cost effective. Looks like I'm out another $20 lol.
 
....

You bought a MAC and your worried about trying to save $20...come on man....the airport extreme has been found to have slightly better range, as well.
 
Re: ....

Originally posted by appleretailguy
You bought a MAC and your worried about trying to save $20...come on man....the airport extreme has been found to have slightly better range, as well.
Click to expand...

Airport Extreme's range is not necessarily better than plain Airport. A lot has to do with where the card is installed.

My old G3 iBook (700/cdrom) with regular Airport had way better wireless reception than Airport Extreme in both my friend's 15" aluminum PowerBook and my new 12" PowerBook. That's the only thing I miss about my iBook. It picked up signals and connected to networks the PowerBooks couldn't even "see."

I'd imagine Airport Extreme in the new iBooks has great range too, but it's not a function of "Extreme-ness." It's a function of the iBook's plastic-ness.

You might nitpick and say range and reception aren't the same thing, as I'm addressing reception. Just in case, I'll point out the two are inextricably related and practical application carries more weight than theory.

edit: To be fair, I'd like to ask you who found Airport Extreme's range to be better than regular Airport, because the claim you made is that it "has been found." Thanks. :)
 
...

I know the difference between the ALUMINUM and PLASTIC differences of the powerbooks and iBooks, and yes, it affects range no matter what.
The previous post was right, I was referring to practical application of the orig airport and the airport extreme, i.e., the extreme has the capacity to be slightly faster, so the farther away you go, the connection speed will be slightly faster than orig airport, provided both machines are the same.
Does that make any sense?
 
my understanding, from reading the manuals, is that 802.11g's range is limited, and after a certain threshold you drop into 802.11b. the 802.11g limit is around 50 feet. the 802.11b range is much greater, at around 300 feet.

however, the range of the antennas inside Airport Base Stations may have improved with the Extreme models compared to the previous ones.
 
If you plan to have this book for any amount of time, you need to think about future compatibility. Four years ago, I didn't even use the 56k modem in my Compaq. Now I use high-speed, wireless DSL with my powerbook. Although you might not consider networking beyond the web now, you never know what the future will bring.
The $20 will be well spent, and you don't have many options. Suck it up, buy it and thank us rats later. ;)
 
...

I agree that you do drop into b range...but still faster than the b would be at that range...
This is a pointless discussion though. Macs take one or the other, so just deal with it. Seriously, 20 bucks?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back