wireless usb adapter buying advice

As the offering shows only Windows support, you were wise to ask first. Wireless USB dongles must have driver support and too many you see cheap do not offer Macs drivers.

This firm only sells stuff that is Mac-compatible:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/?Ntk=Primary&Ns=P_Popularity%7c1&Ne=5000&N=6534 &N2=6534&Ntt=wireless+USB

However, find our what OS version is on the powerbook first. Some of those require a min Mac OS of 10.5.8, something not every PowerBook can run.

With some models of older PowerPC-based Apple portable or wireless, an upgrade from earlier

Panther 10.3.9 to either Tiger 10.4.11 or Leopard 10.5.8, may be of help to get a higher level of

wi-fi support. In some models, this can mean a connection via WPA or WPA2, instead of WEP.

The USB dongle for wi-fi was a good item, as it allowed one to use the portable away from home

& when traveling; however as time goes on, secure browsing is even more important everywhere.

Another workaround, when at home, is to set up a second older wireless base station, apart

from your newer gear and use that for older; then a small sub-network can be created to use

the portable computer without an Ethernet cable, to use the internet &/or use dedicated printer.

Additional hardware may be needed to split the source of your internet, for this to work.

A few days ago I'd seen a USB wireless dongle for use with older Macs; didn't save the link since

I was looking for something quite different at the time. Some web sites list items, no longer stocked.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂

Depending on the model of PowerBook G4, if the AirPort card (missing?) was one of

the later AirPort Extreme cards, the unit should be able to connect via WPA2 if the

computer could run Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8. So, if the processor series 'speed'

is higher than 867MHz the unit could run Leopard 10.5(.8) if not, only Tiger 10.4.11.

(There was a patch to be able to run Leopard 10.5 on unsupported slower CPU;

while it allowed the upgrade, the results were not comfortable due to hardware limit)

So you may be able to locate a source for a working AirPort card, for that model

PowerBook G4. A few sources I'd seen offer non-working, & working. Of course

the defective ones were less expensive, and don't help you connect to anything.

Hopefully the computer works out well.

Good luck & happy computing! 🙂