Unless you have the latest G4 PowerBook, or the latest revision of the Mirror Drive Door tower, you have been stuck with wireless networking that maxes out at 802.11b’s 11Mbps. Since the release of Airport driver version 3.1 last night, this is no longer the case!

On Thursday June 19th, Apple updated the firmware of the Airport Extreme Base Station to comply with the recently ratified 802.11g specification. Along with this update comes a new driver for Airport users. And with the new driver release comes undocumented support for third party wireless cards.

If you currently have an 802.11b Airport card installed in your Mac, it may be time to look at an upgrade. I have been using a 3rd party PCMCIA wireless card in my TiBook for several months. This was made possible by a driver modification available at www.osxhax.com. This driver mod took the form of a Perl script that modified the Airport drivers to be compatible with Linksys 802.11g PCMCIA (Cardbus) cards. After running the script and rebooting, my PowerBook then used the 3rd party card installed in the expansion slot rather than the Apple card in the internal slot. Even better, it treated the 3rd party card just like an Airport card. No third party software was necessary.

With the release of the 3.1 driver, Apple software engineers added the compatibility themselves. It is no longer necessary to hack the driver. Just be sure you remove any existing Airport card from the internal Airport slot before adding the new one to the PCMCIA slot. Since the third party card uses the Apple driver, it is essential not to have the stock Airport card installed at the same time. Two wireless adapters in one Mac cause a confilic in the Airport drivers.

This news is exceptional for PowerBook users as a whole. If you own a TiBook, there are a couple of distinct advantages. The first, and most obvious is the increase in speed. Wireless access at 54Mbps rather than 11Mbps is a substantial jump in performance. The less obvious advantage is the most notable. The TiBook may look aesthetically impressive but the overwhelming fact is that titanium has a crippling effect on the signal strength of Apple’s built-in Airport card. Third party cards actually extend from the side of the PowerBook by about a half-inch. This extension is where the card houses its built-in antenna— and since it is actually receiving as signal from outside the PowerBooks titanium case, the signal strength is substantially better.

In the short time since the release of the 3.1 drivers, I have done considerable testing with the line of 802.11g products available from Buffalo. The PCMCIA card is extremely affordable and Buffalo even offers a product that will work in desktop computers (Click here to see the Buffalo products we offer, or the OWC 802.11g card here).

Just install the adapter card into any Mac running OS X that has a free PCI slot and attach the small external antenna to the back of the card. The signal strength of Buffalo card with its external antenna actually surpasses the signal strength of a Mac running an Apple Airport card attached to the antenna built into G4 tower cases!

It’s also worth mentioning that if you upgrade to one of the Buffalo 802.11g cards, you can still access 802.11b networks without issue. Since they fully comply with the 802.11g specification, the cards are fully backward compatible when communicating with 802.11b based networks.

Apple was the first computer manufacturer to introduce wireless access to its entire shipping computer line. With the release of the new drivers, it is no longer necessary to have the latest and greatest Mac in order to get high-speed wireless access. Just download the 3.1 driver and install a Buffalo card!