mac wireless help

[kimchicowboy]

my friend has a powerbook G4 running an 802.11b airport card (firmware version 9.52) connected to a netgear mr814v2.

whenever she goes downstairs, it'll disconnect at times. her roommate has a dell laptop with a netgear wireless card without any problems. any help? thanks!

[eSDee]

I imagine that the wireless card in the powerbook is internal. If so, then the reception is not going to be as good as with an external pcmcia wireless card. There's nothing really you can do about that, except reposition the router so that you have the best coverage for your mac. The PC should continue to work just fine.

[Maarchk]

Yeah i had that problem with my mac the other day. I was sitting at a table doing work in a place where the router is upstairs. And just spontaneously the signal would come and fade and go out completely for a couple minutes and then pick back up. The only thing i can think of is repositioning your friend or her router so that it covers more area around downstairs. Unfortunately 8011b tends to struggle a little bit through walls and mac's in particular are a little picky about their location and orientation.

[revil]

that's not true esdee. my mac has a great signal. better than most psmcia cards. mostly because the mac uses an internal antenna which goes around the screen. my guess is the old mac has an underpowered card.

[eSDee]

Believe me revil I speak from experience. I have a 15" powerbook and at work I use a 12" from time to time and it is my experience that PC''s with external PCMCIA wireless cards most of the time have a better range. We recently put 15 WAP's in my building that I had to troubleshoot and the only machines that were having trouble with coverage in weak areas were the powerbooks. However, it is possible that the reception in a powerbook is better than a PC with an internal wireless card.

One more thing kimchi, is your airport software all updated?

[revil]

odd, it's the other way around in my network. then again, we only got nine computers and 3 WAPs.

[kimchicowboy]

thanks for the info guys. :)

esdee, i don't think my friend would have updated her software since she purchased her powerbook. is there some software upgrade she should install?

[eSDee]

OSX right? Go the Blue Apple->Software Update. That might be the problem. There have been a billion airport updates.