Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / February 2004

Where are you looking for the Airport Extreme card?  It's only 99USD at
the online Apple store.  I'm in the same predicament.  I used the old
Airport for about a year and a half, but with my new AlBook, I can't, so
I have to go to the Extreme.  I agree that it is kind of pricey, with a
feature I'm not going to use right now.  At the same time, if you've
ever used a regular PCMCIA wireless card (with the Antenna hanging off
the side and all) and then gone to an Airport or Airport Extreme, you'd
never want to go back.  With the builtin antennas on the iBooks and
PowerBooks, it's seamless.  There is NO:
- carrying around a separate card to take up more space
- remembering to put the card in and waiting for it to be recognized
- worrying about how you hold or move the laptop so you don't break
   the damned antenna off
- thinking about the wireless card period

Plus, I saw better reception out of my old Airport card than I did with
a Linksys PCMCIA on a Compaq laptop.  I hope the Extreme will be as good
to me.  And who is to say that I won't go and get an 802.11g router for
my house so I won't have to plug into a wired connection to transfer
files larger than a picture in a reasonable amount of time.  I know it
is a seemingly unreasonable expense, but in my opinion, it's definitely
worth it.

Jason