Ripped off? (Airport card with non-Apple wireless modem?)

T

thendis

Registered
Hello,

I'm very new at networking, and don't fully understand what Airport does. All I know is I bought a Netgear Wireless Ethernet DSL modem/router and asked my local Apple retailer what I need for my mac to use broadband internet using this modem. He told me to buy an Airport Extreme Card for my eMac G4 800.

I haven't installed it yet, because I have noticed everything I have read on Airport cards only seems to assume you have an Airport Base STation, which i don't have.

Can you use an airport card with a 3rd party wireless Modem, or should I get my money back? :)

Thanx! :)
Thendis
 
Leave your money at the AppleStore and enjoy the great compatibility of Macs and their airport cards. It will work just fine with your netgear router.
 
Wo-HOO I was hoping you'd say that! thanks Z!

I have only recently converted to Mac, and have been very impressed with their compatibility with 3rd party products.

Coming from an Ex-PC person, there is a myth going aroudnin the PC community that nothing is compatible with Apples except Apple brand stuff, which i have found to be very false.

:)
 
The Airport cards and Airport extreme cards are compatible with the 802.11b and 802.11g standards respectively. You don't need an airport base station to use them, but any standard wireless kit that works with the 802.11 standards should be fine.
 
About nothing being compatible with Apple stuff: I am using a "windows-only" bluetooth dongle, a windows-only pc card bus for 108mbit wifi, usb mouse from logitech and Viro just installed a regular 2.5'' ide harddisk into his iBook..
If PC-Users only knew.. :)

Btw, I have even a regular Infineon 144Pin S0-SDRam in my tibook which works just fine..
 
I didn't know that the TiBook used SDRAM. I always assumed that they were using 200pin DDR memory, but that's getting really OT now.
 
Yup, regular SDRam here. But I remember there was no huge difference in speed when the powerbooks went DDRam. In the beginning, there were just 12'' and 17'' alubooks and speed-comparisons showed an equal result compared to the tibook with the same clock speed. And hey, I was happy about this in those days. A 144Pin SDRam 512mb modul was half as expensive as a DDRam one. ;)
 
When you say "200 pin DDR RAM" it is still SDRAM. SDRAM = Synchronous Dynamic and of course RAM = Random Access Memory. DDR RAM is still SDRAM, it just operates on the rising and falling edges of the clock cycle.

Laptops actually use SO-DIMMs. It's still SDRAM, the difference is form factor (the socket it goes into) and pin count. iBooks and PowerBooks can use DDR SDRAM, but needs the smaller form factor: SO-DIMM.

There is no difference in performance because the G4 CPUs are limited to just 133 or 166 bus speeds. I'm not trying to pick on Apple, but putting DDR RAM into G4 systems now is simply a marketing ploy to make users feel like they're using the latest and greatest in technology. The technical advantages of using DDR memory in G4 systems is minimal.
 
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