New to Wireless

Hi Marie Helene

Welcome to the forums! Here are some answers for you.

1) All new Macs have internal Airport Extreme cards. You can double-check by going to the Apple menu (top left of the screen), then About this Mac, then More Info. Under "Airport card", you should see "Airport Extreme".

2) No, you don't need another base station at all - the Express is sufficient to hook up to the internet and stream music to a stereo.

3) No. Don't forget that the wireless network operates at a maximum of 55Mb/s, so that will be the fastest networking you'll get. That's generally fast enough for most operations (transferring large files across a network may be slow, though). Do you really have a 128 Mb/s connection (that seems very fast - a common cable speed is more like 8Mb/s)

4) All wireless routers are generally intercompatible, so you should definitely do a cost-value analysis on the options available to you. Check out the Linksys wireless routers, for example. Personally, I think the Express is pretty good value, especially if you use the music streaming feature. If you need more flexibility, though (for example, adding a wired computer), you should look at more-featured options.

Hope that helps

Matt

All G4 iBooks have an Airport Extreme wireless interface. The only difference between older and current models is that current models have the interface built in, wherease older models used a user-installable Airport Extreme card (that might or might not have been pre-installed at the factory).

The G4 iBook and its Airport Extreme wireless interface will work with any WiFi certified 802.11b/g wireless router - this includes non-Apple wireless routers, the Airport Extreme Base Station, and the Airport Express.

Your internet connection won't work any faster if you are connecting to it wirelessly. The download speed of most cable/DSL internet connections is far slower than the data transfer rate supported by a wireless network.

Yes non-Apple routers work just as well (and from strictly a performance point of view, better). For the beginner who would rather be up and running with a minimum of fuss, for whom the ability to use a printer wirelessly is a useful feature, and a solution at a rock bottom price is not a priority, using Apple's Airport Express or Extreme Base Station is probably the best choice.

The Airport Express analog audio output can be connected to any sound system that has a line-level audio input. You don't need $125 cables - any adapter cable that has a 1/8" stereo miniplug adapter at one end (to go into the Airport Express audio output jack) and connectors to match the input of your sound system at the other end will do - typically such a cable will cost you less than $5 at any store selling audio equipment.

Will living next to a small airport affect your connection? Probably not - they use radio frequencies different from that used by wireless networking.

The Airport Express supports the WiFi standards of both 802.11b (11Mbps connections) and 802.11g (54Mbps connections). Both standards exceed the 128Kbps download speed of your existing internet connection by a considerable margin.