QuickerTek ExpressCard WiFi has draft-n, huge honking antenna
Owner of an aging MacBook Pro with a decidedly draft-n AirPort card, the adoption of a Time Capsule as my router has spurred me to lust after a speedier WiFi solution. The QuickerTek WiFi ExpressCard might have been it, except for a bizarre request of almost total Airport castration before installation, a $199 price tag and a massive umbrella-like antenna which — in its size and shape — conjures more the image of some sort of wireless internet IUD than a happy receptor for incoming bits.
QuikerTek Express Card [Official Site]
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As I read it, you can use the card with and without the antenna. The antenna would certainly give you more range. I don't know why they want you to not have an Airport card, though; perhaps the Apple drivers have trouble with two wireless devices with the same (or similar) chipsets.
Any Apple computer owner that has a mini-PCI-e slot for Airport (e.g. every Intel Mac Mini, MacBook, MacBook Pro) that doesn't have a draft 802.11n card can have one swapped in for about $50. Just swap in a Dell 1500 802.11n mini-PCI-e card and run the Airport Admin updates, and OSX will recognize it as an 802.11n Airport Extreme card.
No need to take up your ExpressCard 34 slot or plug in an external antenna like you're trying to run the KisMAC wireless stumbler.
Big ugly external antennas FTW!
Aesthetics be damned!
be careful with buying things from quickertek. I once bought an external antenna for my g4 ibook. turns out, regardless of what was put on their web site at the time, g4 ibooks have their airport cards firmly attached by another card to the mother board. The kicker is that the antenna cable can't be removed from the airport card.
To open my computer that much has resulted in me having to repair many parts of my computer with my own soldering skills.
certainly I was dumb to go farther than the dirth of instructions to try to figure out how my new 100 dollar antenna to work. But I would doubt the compatibility and usefulness of anything from quickertek now too
I used one of the quickertek antennas for my powerbook g4 (titanium) for 4 years. This thing was absolutely fantastic. I went from pulling hardly any reception to infinitely more than almost every machine I've been around since (with the exception of the macbooks). I've kind-of missed it since upgrading to a MBP, but the surgery get to the airport cable on my other powerbook was too stressful to want to do to a brand-new machine. This express-card solution for the new ones though seems pretty hot.
Hey it has a clip for a car window.
WIFITOR IS PLEESED
If you're the DIY type, you can google up a comprehensive strip-down guide for any macbook, gut it, and slap in a shiny new internal N card from ebay.. It's actually quite easy if you can work a screwdriver.
Check first, which type of card it uses, mini-pci, or mini-pci express.. You might also want to check that OSX supports the card, but as I understand it there are few internal N cards, and I think they're all supported by OSX. Regardless, many of the ebay auctions will say they're specifically for macs or will have the word airport in the listing. These are (presumably) compatible.
Your G card will likely only have two antennas, and the N will probably want three, but I'm using mine with just two antennas with no problems.
(If anyone knows of any high power mini-PCI-e cards, please post the information here.)
As for OSX compatibility, basically the chipset has to be Atheros or Broadcom, but not Intel.
(Unless we're talking about going way back to the PC Card used in the G4 Titanium Powerbooks and old PowerMac towers. Then you can use a Prism2 chipset 300mW card like the Z-Com XI-325HP.)
Gee you guys.. I purchased one of the Quickertek ExpressCards because my MacBook Pro didn't come with an internal AirPort card. I called QuickerTek and they explained to me why this ExpressCard doesn't work with the internal AirPort card. They have the same chip set so, when you plug in the ExpressCard and restart your computer the card goes active and it is like you have an AirPort card installed. the AirPort icon in the top dock shows your signal strength. And the antenna is not "umbrella" like at all! I have my Base Station set for 5.8ghz only and I now am running 300Mbps which is super fast!...
Say what you want about QuickerTek but I have three different items from their product line and I have never had problems with them. When I call to ask questions I always get helpful answers.
I always recommend QuickerTek products to all my friends and family.