Airport Extreme base home network

[andymac]

Hi folks

Can Airport Extreme be my base wireless AP for home network? I got one Mac PBG4 (old) and one Winteil Laptop with build in Wireless card.
More generated, is Airport Extreme Wi-Fi general or it only communicate with Apple machines?

By the way, I find it pretty unfair for us, PB G4 users, that we cann't have new Airport Extreme card extended to benefit the 802.11g functionality. What do you guys think? Are there some work-arounds?

 

[Gnomo]

Yes, you will be able to use the Airport Extreme Base Station as an AP in you home network.

It runs on the 802.11b & 802.11g Standards (well, at least the 802.11b standard, 802.11g hasn't been ratified yet). So, this means it will inter operate with ANY equipment that works with those standards.

As for your powerbook, they only current way to get it to use 802.11g would be to purchase a third party pcmcia 802.11g card (I think linksys makes one, but I don't know if it has Mac drivers). However, since I assume your PC uses a standard 802.11b card, you might as well just stick with the orignal airport card in your PB. You really won't get any speed increase when surfing the internet (a T1 is 1.5 Mbps, 802.11b is 11Mbs, so you aren't getting slowed down by your network) and you would be limited to 11 Mbs if you were transfering files between your PC and your Mac (unless you bought a new Mac at some point.