A friend has one of the Apple Airport devices (looks like a toilet) hooked
to his home network (has a Linux box on his cable modem). He shares the
cable modem with a couple systems in his office, but he has a Lucent WaveLAN
card in his laptop and an ISA version of the WaveLAN in a PC upstairs. The
laptop and desktop using the WaveLAN cards are all Windows 98 systems. The
only catch was he needed a Mac to configure the Airport device, once that
was done he didn't need to touch the airport device. (He doesn't have a
Mac).
The Airport device from Apple has an ethernet and modem port. So if you
don't have a cable modem or DSL you can use the Airports modem to connect to
your ISP.
The Airport and WaveLAN cards can handle 11Mbps. Not too shabby for
wireless, and much faster than the phone line and AC networking devices.
My friend loves it. He can take his laptop anywhere in the house.
The Airport device runs about $300 (US), and the WaveLAN's run about $160.
If anyone has any experience with a PC configurable Airport device I would
be interested in hearing about it. I don't have easy access to a Mac.
Mike
