iStumbler and Safari Great Combo!

P

Pat Anderson

New member
I am sitting here in Squalicum Harbor right now, as far as the Mac Airport card can see, bbx (Broadband XPress, a $$$ service) and a couple of secure access points are all that exist. iStumbler found at least two other open access points, with weak signals, including the omnipresent "linksys" at about 13% - 28% signal strength (constantly changing). Firefox simply CANNOT load pages from these weak signal access points - the spinner just goes on and on until FF gives up. Fired up Safari, this is the Apple browser of course - hey presto! Pages load fast, I can read and post. I definitely recommend iStumbler (somebody said use Net Stumbler for Windoze) and Safari, which I understand Apple has recently released for Windoze. I just am just amazed at how many places there is some open access point...
 
The BBX people sell a souped-up bridge that definitely pulls in the WiFi signals better than a bare Airport or the like. The price shown on the web page is pretty outrageous but you can get it cheaper with a promotion at SBS. You can also go the cantenna route, mentioned earlier. Of course, you can use the bridge with other vendors besides BBX, and I'm sure you could buy a generic bridge, but I don't know about where to get the high-power antenna they supply. I bought one at SBS to use with my old TiBook which, as you may know, has a severely limited AirPort range. Got a new MacBook so that won't be as much of an issue.

Warren
 
Pat,

The macbook doesn't have an external antenna connector. You have to open up the case and do a little surgery to make it happen. There is an expensive alternative - http://www.welovemacs.com/27xvrusb.html - this is a transceiver that is powered from the USB port and which has it's own external antenna and which boosts signal in both directions - $225 - is a bit pricey.
 
Or, if you have house batteries and an inverter, you can buy one of the many Linksys, etc. wireless router products for $60 or so and connect via your ethernet port.

Warren
 
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