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New PB airport SUX!!!
- Thread starter Temujin
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epepper9 said:
But Rev. D didn't have these issues...
I was hoping for good resale value, but this is ridiculous!
New Airport update from Apple site
AirPort Update 2005-001
This update fixes reliability and resolves AirPort compatibility issues with certain third party 802.11 cards and access points for Mac OS X v10.4.3 and later.
System Requirements:
- Mac OS X v10.4.3 and later
- AirPort Extreme card
Link here
Hope that this helps you powerbook guys+gals..
AirPort Update 2005-001
This update fixes reliability and resolves AirPort compatibility issues with certain third party 802.11 cards and access points for Mac OS X v10.4.3 and later.
System Requirements:
- Mac OS X v10.4.3 and later
- AirPort Extreme card
Link here
Hope that this helps you powerbook guys+gals..
osiris315 said:
Thanks, just released today I see. I'll bring it to school and see if this fixes the problem.
Also possible through OS Update I see.
drlunanerd said:
I think the the Airport is built in on the motherboard in the most recent rev of the ibooks and powerbooks. I searched the forums for a while and tried to veify this but couldn't nail it down-- I'll keep looking.
Thanks again for the link. I tried again without the update. Still didnt work. Then I installed the update, and Bang!!! Zip!! it worked. Connected right away, with no problems at all.
Don't know about stability yet though.
Don't know about stability yet though.
Having owned both an ibook and a powerbook I can confirm that the ibooks have MUCH better wireless reception. Probably due to plastic being a crap absorber of radio waves...
As dfarrara mentioned, the airport aerials for the powerbook are either side of the screen. The system sees which one gives the best wireless reception and uses that one. It doesn't use both at any one time. The other aerial is used for bluetooth.
As dfarrara mentioned, the airport aerials for the powerbook are either side of the screen. The system sees which one gives the best wireless reception and uses that one. It doesn't use both at any one time. The other aerial is used for bluetooth.
Hearing all these stories now about the issues with ne new pbs I'm very glad I have my rev D in full working order. No airport problems (20 metres through walls no big deal), no dead pixels, no lines, just pure bliss since April 2005.
Have to give it to Apple. The airport fix came quite fast in my opion. You guys think they were expecting this problem, considering the fast fix?
They probably figured it out, since there's actually quite a lot that's new about the PowerBooks behind the scenes. It seems that the logic board is the first truly new one in a long time, and it wasn't available during the 10.4.3 development process, because it didn't exist in any finalized form. Apple generally does respond quickly to problems, and if it can fix them quickly, they do it. Some problems are not so easily solved or have no solution.Temujin said:
They can't get around the fact that aluminum is bad for wireless reception, so they just have to minimize its effects (plastic windows and software/hardware cheats wherever they can).
If the new 'Books have built-in Airport cards, that means no upgrading to the finalized 802.11n, right? Or could you use the PCMCIA card slot, so you would have two wireless chipsets? 
AFAIK you can't get at the airport cards on the previous model powerbooks either as the keyboards aren't latched as they used to be. You have to take the whole machine apart. They did this as soon as the airport became part of the standard build on all machines.dferrara said:If the new 'Books have built-in Airport cards, that means no upgrading to the finalized 802.11n, right? Or could you use the PCMCIA card slot, so you would have two wireless chipsets?
My understanding is that the new powerbooks use a combined bluetooth/airport card but it is still a separate daughter card in the same way that the modem is. The connector may well have changed though.
When Apple changed to Airport Extreme they changed the connector and left users with no upgrade path other than buy a new machine so don't be surprised if they do it again. The difference this time is that removing the built in Airport card will be a real pain and it seemed that last time you had to make sure there was only one wireless card in the machine when you wanted to add a PCMCIA 802.11g card. This is hard to do when the built in card is not easy to get at.