benos Posted June 2, 2006 Share Posted June 2, 2006 When traveling, it would be nice to extend my Powerbook's WiFi range. It's so irritating when you just have to send that one last email and you're just on the fringe of a signal. Does anyone have any experience with something like this: http://www.welovemacs.com/mawlusb.html thanks, be Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted June 2, 2006 Share Posted June 2, 2006 I would be very surprised if it had any appreciable range increase ((appreciable means more than 10-15% here). I have PC friends who use various 3rd party USB and PCI WiFi adapters (not this one though) and none of them get noticeably better fielding than my aluminum PowerBook does. Some get less and some are even more direction sensitive than the PowerBook is. You pays your money and you takes your chances. The biggest downside of the USB dongle ones that stick out of the USB jack is the possibility of whacking it and busting your USB jack which is real bad juju. I have a friend with a funky iBook G3 now because he didn't want to spring the extra $20 for the Apple internal AirPort card and went for a $59 USB WiFi device. BTW, now he has the AirPort card, seays it works easier than the 3rd party device ever did. He didn't say the range was the difference, only how easily it worked. These are all optimized for Windows and the X software sux hind teat in all cases. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Heiter Posted June 2, 2006 Share Posted June 2, 2006 The old Powerbooks used to do wi-fi by basically using an external PCM/CIA card internally somehow. I have a range extender antenna that I wired into one of the old airport basestations to extend the range on it that I don't use anymore. Does it have to be USB or can you use an antenna w/ one of the small pin connectors (not sure of the name)? John When traveling, it would be nice to extend my Powerbook's WiFi range. It's so irritating when you just have to send that one last email and you're just on the fringe of a signal. Does anyone have any experience with something like this: http://www.welovemacs.com/mawlusb.html thanks, be Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Posted June 2, 2006 Share Posted June 2, 2006 John is onto what the issue is. Unlike beauty, "range is in the eye of the sender", not the beholder. The antenna at the receiver cannot be messed with very easily so that's typically a dead end other than small gains from alignment. The PowerBook antenna is in the rim of the display and aligning the display 90 degrees with the ground plane can help increase range in some cases, depending on transmitter fielding. Adding a better antenna to the "transmitter" end of the system (Base Station), or polarizing the one already in use, or increasing the transmitter power is really the only way to increase range to any great degree. The receiver is a more passive device and gains at it's end are few and far between compared to gains that can be had at the active end of the loop. Repeater base stations are the best way to extend range. The only problem here is you need to be in control of the original transmitter to re-hop it so this is no help with public/pirated WiFi. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benos Posted June 2, 2006 Author Share Posted June 2, 2006 Thanks! You guys saved me a trip to Fry's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted June 3, 2006 Share Posted June 3, 2006 There are huge differences between antennas on WiFi gear. We've seen more than 2x differences in the RF chamber with the same radio hardware, just different antennas. But, there's no practical way to tell which is good and which is bad without doing chamber tests, or some half-baked version thereof, so unless you can find somebody that does or have a sack of spare cash, I'd skip it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benos Posted July 29, 2006 Author Share Posted July 29, 2006 One last follow up on this. I was in Fry's the other day and just happened to walk down an isle with some WiFi'ish looking antenna's in it. So I bought a Hawking "Boosts range up to 300%" (and it also had the word "Gain" in the descrip) USB Wifi antenna. I just had to try it. And guess what - I should never doubt anything George says. It was worse than the factory antenna in my friend's 17" PB. be Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted July 29, 2006 Share Posted July 29, 2006 You want gain? http://www.instructables.com/id/EQARE4I72GEPUCHTHU/?ALLSTEPS (actually the strainer version from http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/ is probably better, but that site is a mess) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
benos Posted July 29, 2006 Author Share Posted July 29, 2006 You want gain? http://www.instructables.com/id/EQARE4I72GEPUCHTHU/?ALLSTEPS(actually the strainer version from http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/ is probably better, but that site is a mess) I'm going to get right on that - thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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