Wireless Powerbook cards

[shoozleboy]

My wife has a G3 powerbook and I want to get her hooked up wirelessly to our home network.

I use a Linksys wireless adapter for my PC laptop, can the same card be used in her Powerbook? (she has the PCMCIA slot in her PB)

I didn't want to try my card in her PB without some input from the Mac experts here...

If not, then can you guys recommend a wireless card? Be gentle - I'm Mac-Illiterate. (wife is the expert on Mac in this house - and that's stretching it calling her the expert!)

Thanks.

[The village idiot]

I don't think you will find any Mac drivers for your Linksys card. You could try it, it won't do any damage. You could also buy a Mac Airport card and it will connect to your wireless network just fine. You might want to check D-Link, I think they have a few Mac capable devices.

[The village idiot]

Best I could find for you:

http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=175

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/71007/wo/pj1j5dd5a9ri2...LWr/1.3.0.6.10

[sterno]

http://www.macwireless.com/ sells Mac wireless adapters. Orinoco WaveLAN cards have their own driver for the Mac, and I think there are one or two other cards that can use the Apple Airport driver because they have the same chipset. You can also buy third-party drivers that will work with a lot of PC-only cards from http://www.ioxperts.com/ or http://www.orangeware.com/endusers/end_home.html.

If the PowerBook is one that can use an internal Apple Airport card that's probably the best option because they don't need an external antenna.

[rallynavvie]

I've got a G4 Powerbook with a regular Airport in it and it works just fine with my D-Link wireless router. I'd get that since it's officially supported by Apple.

[shoozleboy]

Do you think the Airport will work with a Linksys wireless router? That's what I have in my home network.

Thanks for the links, VI - I'm checking them out tonight.

Thanks also rally and sterno - you got me pointed in the direction I need to get some info.

[shoozleboy]

Sterno - you might have to educate me on the adapter that I was looking at on macwireless.com.

http://www.macwireless.com/html/products/11g_11b_cards/11bPCCard.html

It says that it comes in 200mw and 32mw versions. What is the difference? I looked at the airport versions and they need MAC OS 10.x.x and she has a version 9.x on her G3 PB.

I didn't see an explanation on their website....

Thanks again.

[The village idiot]

OS9 = out of luck

I think your only choice will be the Apple Airport for OS9, and it should work just fine with your Linksys router.

Too bad the GUI for OSX is such a power hog! If you run an X window system instead of the Aqua GUI, it would run OSX very nicely.

[sterno]

For OS9 you can also use one of the commercial 3rd-party drivers, but the price of a card plus the driver is probably more than the price of an airport card.

200mW and 32mW are power ratings (mW=milliwatt). That's the transmitter power. Higher power means longer range, better performance through walls/floors, etc.