Nora, I am a purist, I will only use Apple products, so I have to at least give you my experience. I have three locations, (four is I count the one I installed for my daughter) all with Airport Extreme. On my home I am in an upstairs room, and can get connection all over the house, even across the street at my daughter's home.
At my office I am around tons of metal and wire. The building is an old claims office of Farm Bureau and the room I am in was the old computer room and the walls and ceiling are full of their old wires and conduit. I can walk all over the building and have great signal as well as outside in the parking lot and the unit is just 30 inches off the floor, as is the one in my home. In the home I am building I have the Airport in the corner of the basement, next to huge amounts of wiring, two large electrical boxes and the box with all the coax, cat 5, and phone system wires. I have this shut up in a small area of the house, so there is little I have done to make this easy for the system. I can get signal in all the lower level, then on the main level I do find some dead spots. On the upper level I still can get signal in spotty locations, but with the new Airport Express I will solve that problem as soon as I am moved in. I put one in my daughter's house as well, and she has no problems anywhere in her home and I can log onto her system from my house and I am well over 100 feet away and she doesn't have an external antenna. For me, the cost consideration is much more than just the initial expenditure for using my time to constantly try to get the computer systems to work outweighs any difference between a product that is not Apple's vs another vendor. John R. On Jul 2, 2004, at 1:22 PM, Nora J. Probasco wrote: > Hi Group, > > Well, I hooked up the Linksys WRT54G ?to my G4 desktop, G3 ibook and > finally got the Dell to connect. It has been a long, frustrating trial > to get the software loaded and installed for the WMP54G on the Dell > computer. Now we have another problem. The Dell shows low connectivity > and keeps getting bumped off the system. To test to see if it was the > Dell or the signal, I took my G3 ibook to the same area where the Dell > is and also had the problem. I thought it was supposed to broadcast 50 > ft. I live in a patio home which is smaller than a large home. My > office is at 1 end of the home and where we are trying to connect is > at the other end. Has anyone else had this problem? > > Do I need to get a booster antenna? Or just take it back and invest > in the Airport Extreme base which the Apple rep said broadcast further > with a stronger signal than Linksys? Help! > > Nora > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2879 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.math.louisville.edu/pipermail/macgroup/attachments/20040702/26ef7985/attachment.bin
