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Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / June 2008Why are Airport sensitivities of laptops so different?
My wife and I, sitting in our living room, both talking to the LAN created by our Airport Extreme base station in the adjoining room. In the Airport menu of my MacBook running TIger, in addition to our household LAN I also routinely see the named and protected WiFi LAN of a neighbor 3 houses away, and one or two other intermittently visible Apple LANS to which I can occasionally link, receiving a weak but usable signal, but not get much information from (they seem to be Airport Express signals, but there are no such units in our house, and it's a rural neighborhood, houses reasonably widely spaced). My wife's slightly newer MacBook Pro running Leopard never sees any of these. No problem with this -- I'm just wondering why the sensitivity of a nominally higher-priced Mac is less than my bottom of the line model? > My wife's slightly newer MacBook Pro running Leopard never sees any of > these. > > No problem with this -- I'm just wondering why the sensitivity of a > nominally higher-priced Mac is less than my bottom of the line model? Aluminum vs plastic cases.  SignatureI kill Google Groups posts. See http://improve-usenet.org for details. <http://designsbymike.net/shop/mac.cgi> Mac and geek T-shirts & gifts <http://designsbymike.net/shop/prius.cgi> Prius shirts/bumper stickers <http://designsbymike.net/shop/greet.cgi> Holiday cards with attitude > > My wife's slightly newer MacBook Pro running Leopard never sees any of > > these. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Aluminum vs plastic cases. that's basically why, however, i just saw this today: <http://www.powerpage.org/2008/06/poor_macbook_pro_airport_performance_l inked_to_real_player_11_bug.html> > > My wife's slightly newer MacBook Pro running Leopard never sees any of > > these. [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > > Aluminum vs plastic cases. There's quite a bit of difference even among aluminum/titanium cased models. > > > My wife's slightly newer MacBook Pro running Leopard never sees any of > > > these. [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > There's quite a bit of difference even among aluminum/titanium cased > models. the titanium powerbooks had the antenna in the bottom half with very small plastic apertures, while the aluminum ones have it in the lid with bigger plastic apertures. the macbook pros move the antenna to the hinge with a plastic covering. in all of them, there's still a lot of metal to block or interfere with the signal. > > > > My wife's slightly newer MacBook Pro running Leopard never sees any of > > > > these. [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > the hinge with a plastic covering. in all of them, there's still a lot > of metal to block or interfere with the signal. At work, my boss has a second generation 17" MacBook Pro. I have a first generation 15" MacBook Pro. For the life of me, I can't get a wi-fi connection in our large meeting room, but my boss and those who use Dell laptops have no problem with it. If I really had a pressing need to use wi-fi in that room, which I do not, I would spend some time to find out why, but for now, its just an odd curiosity. My wi-fi works fine lots of other places. | My wife and I, sitting in our living room, both talking to the LAN | created by our Airport Extreme base station in the adjoining room. [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] | No problem with this -- I'm just wondering why the sensitivity of a | nominally higher-priced Mac is less than my bottom of the line model? In a word: incredibly poor design of the antenna system. And no, I'm not buying the augment it's because of the metal case. That's part of the problem but it still comes down to very poor RF design. > My wife and I, sitting in our living room, both talking to the LAN > created by our Airport Extreme base station in the adjoining room. [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > No problem with this -- I'm just wondering why the sensitivity of a > nominally higher-priced Mac is less than my bottom of the line model? SignatureDavid Empson dempson@actrix.gen.nz |
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