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by Steve Becker
Company: MacSense If you've spent any time shopping for a 802.11b wireless PCMCIA card for your Mac, you've probably noticed that the majority of the cards on the market won't work with your computer. Fortunately, having one good card available for your PowerBook is better than having a selection of mediocre wireless cards to choose from. What sets the WPE-700 apart from the competition is both its output power (read range) and its software. While most 802.11b wireless PCMCIA cards don't put out a signal that's over 100mW, the WPE-700 is capable of generating a 200mW signal, and this directly translates into a greater operating range. Additionally, the software that is supplied with the WPE-700 is full featured, easy to configure, and (for the Classic Mac OS) comes with a very handy and informative Control Strip Module. Unfortunately for users of the Classic Mac OS, the documentation that is included with the WPE-700 isn't well written or well organized (setting up the card in OS X is pretty straightforward), so someone that is new to wireless communication may initially find it harder than it should be to properly configure the software for the WPE-700. Also, while the WPE-700 ostensibly supports creating an Ad-hoc wireless network between multiple computers without needing to have an access point, I found this type of configuration often didn't work properly and frequently froze the computers that were in the Ad-hoc network. Other features built into the WPE-700 include power management technology for reducing the drain on your computer's battery, 64 and 128-bit WEP encryption options, and support for multiple operating channels in the US, Canada, Europe, and Japan. The bottom line is that if I were in the market for a 802.11b wireless PCMCIA card, this is the card I would buy! Pros: Has an extended range; includes excellent software. Cons: Ad-hoc network feature is unreliable; documentation for OS 8.6 and 9.x users needs to be improved.  © 2003 by Steve Becker. All rights reserved. |
