Mac book Air and 802.11n

mathias

I am in the market for a small lightweight ultraportable with good image quality , ( for my camera bag ) , and the Mac book air looked like the ideal candidate ,

However what worries me is its heavy reliance on 802.11n , a draft standard with nearly a year to go before ratification.
I have painful experience of 802.11n devices conflicting and hobbling existing wi fi networks ( especially when trying to connect to G networks )

Does anyone else have experience of this, and what do you think of this products heavy reliance on an unfinished standard?

monkeyfudge

Well my MacBook Pro has an 802.11n card in it and I have no issues connecting to wireless networks.

Haven't tried it out on a 802.11n network though... but I am tempted by Time Capsule.

big_moe

i have a macbook with 802.11n and thr apple airport extreme 802.11n base station. all working fine. i have the base station broadcasting "802.11n (b/g compatible)" mode and i never get any trouble with any devices on the network (5+)

and in work we have a G network, again no probs.

adam

mathias

Just to clarify , any Draft n implementation ( and they all are at the moment ) is proprietary , and you will generally have no trouble with equipment from the same supplier , so thats not an issue , but this laptop will presumably be required to connect with all kinds of networks and other non apple 802.11n draft implementations , say for instance , with a netgear router or whatever ,

Thats where the trouble starts , I'll give you an example , a laptop with an intel draft n inbuilt wireless network card not only had huge trouble connecting to the office network ( all 802.11G for the most part ) but when it did connect it considerably reduced speed across the whole section. Thats the type of thing Im worried about here , I guess well have to wait for the reviews , but this machine , with no optical drive as standard and no network connection , could well have huge problems both now and when the real n standard is properly ratified.

Heres hoping alls well , Cos this fits the bill for me perfectly , I want something thats going to add as little weight as possible to my camera bag. The price , though maybe just a little high , is about inline with most other ultraportables Ive been looking at and if it has the same high screen standard as other macs then its perfect , just that wireless thing worrying me.

babypink

i think you're overstating the potential problem. My understanding is that the n-spec is very close to ratification and that the chipsets being produced now are broadly compliant with the competing specs.

Remember that Apple can always issue a firmware update to the Airport card bringing them into line with the finally-ratified spec.

440Hz

hehe! its gone all nerdy in here today lol!

monkeyfudge

Apple have been putting 802.11n cards in their portables since 2006.

I'm posting this over a D-Link wireless network right now using one of these cards.

Is the card in the Macbook Air supposed to be any different from the current Airport Extreme cards?

mathias

i think you're overstating the potential problem. My understanding is that the n-spec is very close to ratification.

Nope , its a very real concern based on very real experience , albeit none of the experience was with apple products , mostly Intel draft n devices and netgear routers on the whole.

802.11n wont be ratified till 2009 at the earliest and there is still 800 plus issues to resolve.

As it stands , the general consensus is that if a draft n device is dual band , 2.4ghz/5ghz , and you keep your n traffic on the higher frequencies , it works well , but mix G and N traffic on the lower frequencies with different equipment and it causes havoc. ( It certainly does with the Intel gear ... I know this for a fact)

daveirl

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