From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The other day I did something unprecedented for myself:
For the very first time I bought a completely up to date computer; an iBook G4 1.2 GHz, 768 megs of RAM, 14" screen.
Congrats, I'm sure you deserve it!
Shortly before buying it I discovered that the school i go to has 3 hot spots on campus for connecting to the internet and local network. I have yet to find out how well this PC oriented campus works with Macs, but it got me thinking none the less.
Doesn't matter, really. 802.11b (or 802.11g) is a platform-independent standard, so the network won't care if you're on a Mac or a PC in order to surf.
The result, I'm seriously considering hoooking up a G3 400 mHz iMac DVSE(not mine), my iBook, perhaps my compaq tower, another local compaq laptop (not belonging to me), and finally, hopefully, a powermac 7500 that resides one floor up and a room or so adjacent to the rest of the computers i want to connect together.
As such, I'm wondering, what can an old iMac like this do with wireless networking?
I don't recall offhand if the iMac has a slot for an Airport (802.11b) card or not, but if it does, you're in business. If it doesn't, there may be an external USB adapter that gives you 802.11b connectivity.
How easy is it to use?
Initial setup can, depending on how you want to go, be a little bit of a hassle. After that it's mostly automatic, at least on OS X.
How much money am I looking at spending?
$200 for the base station, roughly $50-90 for each 802.11b or g card you're going to need.
I was considering an Airport Extreme base Station to mach my airport extreme iBook setup, but am uncertain how well it will work with an older iMac.
You'll only be able to do 802.11b speeds (11mbps) with the older iMac, but that's still more than the typical Cable/DSL connection can do anyway.
Is an airport card necessary fro the iMac, or can I plug the iMac into the Base station's ehternet port?
Either.
As for broadband, I'll just say this: if you plan on sharing this connection between two or more computers, broadband is pretty much mandatory. I don't find that the cost of it (around $40-50 a month for most people) is any more expensive (actually less, generally) than a separate phone line plus ISP ($40 to the phone company + $15-20 to the ISP).
_Chas_
FL-MUG: central Florida's Macintosh User Group. Meetings: second Thursday of the month, 6-9pm, at the Orlando Science Center. http://www.flmug.org
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