February 02, 2003

Yahoo picks me

MIKE WENDLAND: In blogging, the world is your electronic soapbox How about this: Yahoo has made me today's featured article.

Posted by macmike

February 01, 2003

Airport Extreme has me mobile

What follows is information for you regarding Airport Extreme. Currently this is the height of technology. Who knows, in the future there might be o2 Broadband or other wireless internet solutions, but this is what everyone is using now. See what I have to say about it, so you can decide if this is something you want to use.
Picked up my new Airport Extreme card last night and I am comfortably typing this on my new 12-inch PowerBook in a recliner in front of the fireplace.
I'll probably add an Airport Extreme base station to the setup. Eventually. Right now, this is accessing through an old Linksys 802.11b Wi-Fi network. It has about a 35-foot range.
Apple has two new base unit models - a $199 version that boasts a 150-foot range, and a $249 model that allows an external antenna to be plugged in that can expand the range to 500-feet.
These new units from Apple are the next generation in wireless, 802.11g, which support data rates up to 54Mbps, compared to the 1.5 Mbps speeds of 802.11b. That much speed will be noticed primarily by those who network computers to share printers and move big files back and forth on a local access network. If you're using a Wi-Fi/Airport connection to primarily surf the Net, the old 1.5Mbps speed is faster than even the broadband cable you have coming into the house and you don't need anywhere near 54Mbps speed.
But the extra range that Airport Extreme offers has caught my fancy. You can check out the external antennas from a company called Dr. Bott

Posted by macmike