Wireless networking -- newbie question
in [Mac Systems]
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From: Paul Magnussen on 22 Feb 2010 14:50 My wife has a PowerBook G4 17" with an Airport card, which at the moment connects to the Airport express in my home office. Now she would like to be able to take the PowerBook around with her and connect to the Internet (say) on the bus. Where do we start? I can't seem to find any info, I guess I must be searching for the wrong keywords... Thanks, Paul Magnussen
From: Doug Anderson on 22 Feb 2010 14:58 Paul Magnussen <magiconinc(a)earthlink.net> writes: > My wife has a PowerBook G4 17" with an Airport card, which at the > moment connects to the Airport express in my home office. > > Now she would like to be able to take the PowerBook around with her > and connect to the Internet (say) on the bus. > > Where do we start? I can't seem to find any info, I guess I must be > searching for the wrong keywords... The basic problem is that this Airport Express in your home office is not going to have a strong enough signal to make it to the bus. So if your wife wants the Airport card to work on the bus, there has to be a Wifi base station on the bus itself (not very likely). Or, one nearby where the bus is parked (more likely, but not helpful if the bus is moving). There are cards that use the _cell phone_ network to allow you to connect your laptop to the internet while moving on a bus or in a car. Of course you also have to pay the appropriate cellular service provider for that connection.
From: Geoffrey S. Mendelson on 22 Feb 2010 15:19 Paul Magnussen wrote: > My wife has a PowerBook G4 17" with an Airport card, which at the moment > connects to the Airport express in my home office. > > Now she would like to be able to take the PowerBook around with her and > connect to the Internet (say) on the bus. WiFi signals range from about 10 feet to a few hundred depening upon how strong it is, what's in between, the antenna etc. That's not going to get very far on the bus. There have been several schemes to provide free public (or advertiser supported) WiFi, but very few of them have taken off. For example, Estonia has 99% Wifi coverage, much of it free. Old Street in London has a similar system. Philadelphia's plan failed, as well as "Google Zones" one of which was to be the entire city of San Francisco. There is a new technology called WiMax which claims ranges of 2 to 10 miles, but no one knows what will happen in a city with hundreds or thousands of signals all competing in the distance. As someone else mentioned, a cellular modem would be a better choice. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm(a)mendelson.com N3OWJ/4X1GM New word I coined 12/13/09, "Sub-Wikipedia" adj, describing knowledge or understanding, as in he has a sub-wikipedia understanding of the situation. i.e possessing less facts or information than can be found in the Wikipedia.
From: nospam on 22 Feb 2010 15:48 In article <1t6dnbKnsp-XfR_WnZ2dnUVZ_h2dnZ2d(a)earthlink.com>, Paul Magnussen <magiconinc(a)earthlink.net> wrote: > My wife has a PowerBook G4 17" with an Airport card, which at the moment > connects to the Airport express in my home office. > > Now she would like to be able to take the PowerBook around with her and > connect to the Internet (say) on the bus. if the bus has wifi, it will work. the average city bus does not have wifi, but greyhound and similar busses between major cities might. i know that boston-new york busses (and trains) offer wifi and some airplanes do too. there may also be wifi where she's going, after she gets off the bus, such as coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores, doctor's offices, auto dealers, hotels, airports, etc. > Where do we start? I can't seem to find any info, I guess I must be > searching for the wrong keywords... open the powerbook wherever she wants to connect, and if there's an available wifi network, it will show up in the airport menu and possibly pose an alert asking you to connect. after connecting to the network, follow the instructions on the splash page, if any. there might be a fee for some wifi hotspots. if she encounters mostly paid hotspots, she might look into getting a t-mobile or boingo subscription. another option is get a cellular broadband card for the powerbook but that's not going to be cheap.
From: Fred McKenzie on 22 Feb 2010 15:51
In article <1t6dnbKnsp-XfR_WnZ2dnUVZ_h2dnZ2d(a)earthlink.com>, Paul Magnussen <magiconinc(a)earthlink.net> wrote: > My wife has a PowerBook G4 17" with an Airport card, which at the moment > connects to the Airport express in my home office. > > Now she would like to be able to take the PowerBook around with her and > connect to the Internet (say) on the bus. > > Where do we start? I can't seem to find any info, I guess I must be > searching for the wrong keywords... Paul- What you may be looking for is either a cell phone adapter to use with an existing cell phone, or a USB Cellular Modem card that accesses the internet via the cellular phone base stations. I have a Verizon Pantech UM175 cellular modem. It works fairly well. Although download speeds are less than a wired connection, they are significantly faster than dial-up! (Verizon now has a UMW190 model, but it seems to drop its connection fairly often.) Verizon has a program that works on a Macintosh to manage connections using the cellular modem. However, recent versions of OS X have built-in capability to use them without running the Verizon program. Using the Network System Preference, select (or add) the modem, click on Advanced, select Generic from the list of Vendors, and choose GPRS (GSM/3G) from the Model choices. (It may be necessary to first run the Verizon program to initialize the modem.) The Cradlepoint company has a model MBR 1000 WiFi base station/router that can use the USB Cellular adapter to provide a WiFi hot spot. I found one at Best Buy, and prefer it to just sharing the USB adapter via the Mac's AirPort. AT&T and Sprint have comparable USB cellular modems. Verizon and Sprint also have a version that does not require your computer, but provides a WiFi hot spot for multiple users. The cellular modems have a limit of 5 GB download per month. The most I've ever used was less than 4 GB when doing an overdue software update on 4 computers. (If you go over that limit, there is an additional charge.) Fred |