mac with airport card

[grifterspawn]

I know jack about macs, but my buddy is a mac freak and knows im a bit technically savvy...only with pcs...so here is his question.

Can a Mac with an Airport (wireless ethernet) card connect to a base-station or network
other than an Airport one, and can a non-Airport wireless card (such as
that of a PC) connect to an Airport base-station? Sounds like no, or
at least not easily, but just wondering if there was any possibility.

No idea what an airport is, is it some mac specific card??

 

[mitaiwan82]

I think apple's Airport is just another implementation of the IEEE 802.11b wireless protocol. I see people with iBooks/Powerbooks connected to the network on campus (UT Austin), which has the standard 802.11b since my IBM Thinkpad works fine with it. I'm not sure about the other way around, if a wireless-enabled PC can use the Airport Base Station, but I want to say that it can.

 

[ivol07]

From Apple's Website:

Can I use a PC with the AirPort Extreme Base Station?
Yes. A Windows-based PC with an 802.11b Wi-Fi certified wireless card can join an AirPort Extreme wireless network (unless the base station is placed in 802.11g Only mode). Note that a Macintosh computer running Mac OS X v10.1.5 (with networking update) or later is required to set up the base station initially.


Information...

 

[onlyCOpunk]

Yes of course you can. Airport used 802.11b and Airport Extreme uses 802.11g. My Powerbook picked up my wireless signal the second I pulled it out of the box and turned it on. And in fact, the Airport cards get much better reception than PC wireless, from what I'm seeing from personal use.