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TiBook Wi-Fi Range Hack: New Card
eggboard writes "Apple likes the profit margins on its internal AirPort card (still $100 three years after introduction), but the Faraday cage that is the Titanium PowerBook keeps the AirPort card and the TiBook's internal antenna from achieving the same range as the plastic-cased white dual-USB iBooks. Wired News reports today on Cliff Skolnick et al's hack, which is simply to use a 200 mW PC Card coupled with OS X-compatible drivers. The cost winds up less than an AirPort Card, and you can get a model with an external antenna jack, too."
If the new card is pumping out 200 milliwatts of radio signal as opposed to the usual 30- to 100-milliwatt range of most 802.11b cards, what is the hit on battery life?
I don't know about the new iMacs, but the older candy-colored ones had a standard power cord. They are translucent with multicolored wires (like the iMac they came with). I'm using one on my PC right now, in fact. Just another one of those little details that Apple is known for. How many PC vendors would bother with custom made power cords?
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
See this is the problem with Mac fanboys is they take PR as fact. Steve Jobs doesn't care about software reliability, he cares about make profits. I'm not trying to put him down, because making profits is exactly what he should be doing. Mac's could use "commodity hardware" stably, but that would cannibalize their own hardware business. Why spend money supporting drivers from other hardware companies? So instead they give preference to their own hardware, which they should because Apple is a hardware company. Its not about stability, its about profits, which is not bad thing, but I'm sick of Apple fanboys thinking that their is some mission behind the company besides profits.
Why is it that almost every other day Wired has an article about Mac-users doing something wacky. I thought maybe it was because alot of Mac users out there were doing really interesting things like the guy who totes all the old Macs around to raves and sets up old school game LANs. But now I wonder... does Wired report every time a Mac user picks his nose? Some of their past stories were a little questionable, but this one is downright stupid. And I love the title "Mac Toters Push Wireless Bounds", wow, look at me, according to Wired I must be pushing the boundaries of my coffee, I'm ADDING SUGAR.
I love my Mac, and I enjoy reading about other Mac users and their quirks, but come on Wired, keep a sense of reality here. Wired is about CULTURE, not technology. The past articles were always about the personalities using Macs to do unique things, but this one reads like a survey review of WiFi cards out of MacAddict.
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
Apple needs to be compatible with other wireless networks where PCs can connect. They can't simply have their own proprietary wireless standard just because it's faster. Apple isn't Microsoft: they can't pull the same kind of crap that MS does with their own proprietary standards.
Wireless gigabit doesn't exist. There is, however, 802.11a and 802.11g that offer more bandwidth. Unforunately, the market hasn't decided which of these two incompatible standards to settle on. 802.11g is slower, but backwards compatible with 802.11b. My bet is that Apple will eventually go with that one. But the market penetration of non-802.11b wireless is currently insignificant.Extreme price? The Airport card is $99 which is about $40-$50 cheaper than 3rd party 802.11b cards.
You really have no idea what you're talking about.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
I don't know very much about wireless architectures, and what is compatible with what, but will the EnGenius cards work with the Airport?
I have a TiBook and an Airport, and have found the combination almost useless. As soon as there is a *partial* wall between the laptop and the Airport, the signal fades, and then starts to drop, until it finally won't connect anymore (forget about trying to span floors!). I have to physically reset the Airport to make it work once the signal is 'gone'.
I'm not sure if the Airport is defective or what -it works fine when I have visual contact within 30 feet, but further than that, or introduce any obstructions, and all bets are off.
I've read about an invasive hack for the Airport where you add a 'signal booster', but I'm thinking that sliding in a 3rd party network card is much simpler, assuming that the drivers are stable.
Considering I have a dead power cord, let me know if you find a source for other cords like that. Apple insisted I'd have to buy a new power supply for my iBook - I wasn't allowed to replace the cord.
Clear, Dark Skies
Huh? Can anyone explain this? Seems flat out wrong to me, but what do I know?
-Peter
Try using the NVidia drivers with a GF2 sometime, it may not crash today, or tomorrow, but eventually... The only time I've seen linux crash has been through driver/hardware problems...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Just flipped over my TiBook and took out the battery and pressed along the side like the arstechnica link suggested and now I am getting 3 bars in a room where I wouldn't have been able to even get service prior. Its about time this laptop can get some range. I recommend atleast trying this, god knows I didn't think it would work and even when I was doing it it seemed like a waste of time...
my business partner has an airport card in his Ti, we have a wireless net at our office,
he gets much better range than I do with my laptop and a prism chipset wnic. He can wander all around outside our building, and he never drops his connection, I on the other hand am lucky if I get reception on both floors inside the building (the ap is on the top floor, and generally on the bottom floor I don't connect, he does. So I haven't seen these problems with airport cards not getting good reception.
Unless you are doing point-to-point or frequency hopping. The spec sheet for the card ( from www.engeniustech.com ) says it's using DSSS, so it's not frequency hopping. How are they able to claim FCC compliance with this thing?
I just did this and it WORKS. In my basement office I get ZERO reception, maybe one bars flickers on for a second or two every few days (I use an ethernet cable when I'm down here). After doing this little trick I'm getting three bars and a workable connection (four bars if I adjust my position - I'll have to move my desk)
From the threads on Ars it looks like you could get even better reception if you could do the same thing to the antenna on the other side. It does seem (just playing around with it right now) that it favors the side with the battery. It seems I get better reception if I rotate the book so that the side with the battery (where I just adjusted the antenna) I get better reception than if the other side (with the DVD drive) is facing the base station.
I totally agree with you. How on Earth does this deserve an article, let alone being posted on /.? Yes we had the same problem when we ran a solar and peddle powered internet cafe [plug] this summer with the titanium casing, the iBooks were loads less sensitive. But really, the thing comes with a PCMCIA slot, so it's hardly rocket science to go and buy a WiFi card no is it!? I use a slimline Buafflo WaveLAN cards, there are some drivers for it on the net somewhere, try Google, works very well, but don't eject it whilst the interface is being used unless you're in to seeing OS X crash!
Next we'll see articles on how connecting and external DVD-RAM drive via firewire, solves the problem of them not coming with TiBooks!