airport reception on new titianium pb

paulpolios

hi, instead of waiting for a new 15inch albook, i am going to buy a ti for school. my only concern is that i have heard that the airport reception is poor. i will need it to be working in our wireless campus library. i was interested in the opinions of people with tibooks that have used airport in places with wireless access outside of their homes to see what they thought. thanks for your time.



-paul

eugene

I don't know about the most recent TiBooks, but I have the last revision 800 MHz one and its AirPort reception is ridiculously poor. It really depends on the set-up. With a stock Snow Basestation, I wasn't able to get much more than 50 feet of decent reception. With an 8 dBi gain antenna on a new AirPort Extreme Basestation, I can get about 100 feet of line-of-sight reception.



The TiBook does have a Cardbus slot, so you could probably get one of those 200 mW high powered Engenius 802.11b PC Cards if needed.

musicaltone

I have a 1ghz Ti and the AE base station. Reception is great. No noticable difference betweenn the Ti and my Sony Vaio with PCMCIA wireless card. Enjoy your Ti. You will not regret it!

gabid

Quote:

The TiBook does have a Cardbus slot, so you could probably get one of those 200 mW high powered Engenius 802.11b PC Cards if needed.

Remember, with the newest version of the AirPort software you can also pick up any 802.11g PC card (so long as its based on the Broadcom chipset) and pop it in your Ti. Works quite nicely.

agent302

I've got the same model TiBook as Eugene mentioned, and can confirm that Airport reception does suck, even with an Airport Extreme basestation. Suck in this case is a relative term in that every other aspect of the TiBook is flat out amazing, and Airport reception is purely mediocre. I was able to increase my range slightly by reducing the multicast setting, but it still is the one aspect of the TiBook that could be most improved upon.

madmax559

tie a coil of copper wire around your waist

make sure some part of it touches the ti

the increase in range will be amazing

kneelbeforezod

I get pretty good reception on a 1ghz TiBook...when I'm in my upstairs neighbour's apartment I get about 80% of the signal from the Linksys base station in my apartment, and when I'm at another friend's apartment I can pick up two networks from elsewhere in his building. It shouldn't be difficult to get a usable signal on a well covered campus.

1337_5l4xx0r

WiFi reception on an 867mhz, most-recent TiBook is 'OK'. I think reception would prob'ly be better w/ an external card, however internal is more convenient, and the reception is decent. The base station (a US robotics cheapo 802.11b router/firewall/printserver) is upstairs; downstairs, on the front porch I get great reception. Back deck I get virtually no reception.



I don't have another WiFi mac to compare with.



However, I wouldn't rate reception as 'poor', but merely OK.

teufel

Well, folks, as i got down with flu, and had to spend a few days in bed, i got the nice Airport snow base i bought last summer, and tried to make it work with my Tibook 1Ghz.

And it did not work ! All it had to do was go through two walls, and 20 feet between the living room and the bedroom, and i got no signal at all !

Basically i lose the signal after i move the book from the living room, as soon as i cross the first wall.



This is really 200 bucks thrown out of the window.



Hope it works better when i sell the Tibook to buy a G5 book, sometimes next year...

alcimedes

try moving your base station.



electrical wiring can severly impact signal strength. even moving it farther away (but avoiding wiring etc.) can help out.

teufel

Quote:

Originally posted by alcimedes

try moving your base station.



electrical wiring can severly impact signal strength. even moving it farther away (but avoiding wiring etc.) can help out.

Thanks for the idea, but i am limited by two factors:

1- the ethernet cable coming from my provider



2- the station's own AC cable. Maybe it should run on something different than electricity if it is so sensitive to it !



\

giant

If you have no signal, then don't blame it on the powerbook. With panther, my tibook is not dramatically different than the ibook I have here. Where the powerbook has trouble, the ibook also has trouble as well.



I know in my house there are certain walls it has more trouble with than others.



Anyway, the whole powerbook in bed thing is overrated.

alcimedes

even shifting it half a foot in any direction could make all the difference in the world. if you have someone else you can test it with, you can find out in 5 min. where you might get better reception.

shagstlm

I agree. I changed my base station from sitting on one of my shelfs to being mounted no less than half a foot higher on the wall and I now have great reception. I have a 1Ghz TiBook and I can't complain about the reception. Granted its not as good as my girlfriends iBook but not bad. Also watch where you put your hands. I have noticed that if you cover or block the two strips on either side of the palm rests (the antennae) you will loose lots of reception. Also, just a thought...open internet connect and make sure you are on the right network with the right base station mac address. I had a friend who had two of the same SSID s and couldn't figureout why when he was standing right next to his base he had one bar. Turns out he was connected to the neighbors network...probably not likely but worth a shot eh?

teufel

Quote:

Originally posted by giant





Anyway, the whole powerbook in bed thing is overrated. [/B]

What !? You mean it is not like a sexual experience at all ?

chych

I say go for the AlBook, they said the AlBooks had similar reception to the iBooks. If it's anything like the iBooks, it has awesome reception, i.e. my ibook totally creams my sony vaio's pcmcia cards reception (ie 12/15 airport reception when the vaio reports 'poor').