Friday, August 25, 2006

Fun with widgets... I've been having wi-fi issues in my apartment... my Powerbook (and earlier iBook) have never had any problems anywhere... but my new mini and my Thinkpad have always had a bad connection in the back bedroom... So I found a Mac OS X 10.4 widget from a company called JiWire - they sell Wifi Hotspot info (or something like that) -- it displays signal strength and channel info. Unfortunately, it doesn't work if you have a case sensitive file system (Like some Adobe and other products). Easy fix -- they just need to follow the rules for widget file names (hint - they actually ARE case sensitive on a case sensitive file system!) So I fixed it - but it is impossible to enter a message/reply into their support discussion forum to tell the person who asked about this specific issue over 6 months ago... so... good thing the widget itself is free... But it is an interesting widget example... now if only it supported WPA authentication and not just WEP. Not sure how accurate the strength info is - 10 feet from my access point and it says 70% or so (no actual numbers - just a 'bar'. There's a Yahoo widget that says 80-90% (Once I played around with the antennas on the access point. ) But it doesn't tell me channel info. I wonder where they get their info? I know they use a plugin of some sort but where does IT get the info from? -- Okay... after some experimentation... there are 4 wifi networks in range of my apartment, counting mine. One close and two very faint... I changed the channel on my AP to 1 and now, under Windows XP - my mini thinks it has a low 90% signal (according the the Yahoo Wifi signal widget) while my Powerbook, sitting right next to it thinks it has 50-60%. Either they are measuring things a different way or the mini has a better antenna. Or the Powerbook is lower because it is running on a battery and not the wall power... Nope. Wall power has no effect. Let's see what happens when I switch the mini to OS X... Observation? The same hardware... the Yahoo Wifi signal widget registers 20-30% lower signal strength under Mac OS X 10.4 than it does with Windows XP SP2. So... what are the variables -- The operating system - Mac OS X 10.4.7 vs. MS Windows XP Pro SP2 Wireless drivers - both from Apple (Not sure if they wrote them though) The widget - no guarantee they are getting the same info the same way. Hmm... Not sure this little experiment actually tells me anything... even with a lower "signal strength" - my PowerBook has a much better perceived network through-put than the mini running XP. 8:34:23 PM    Notes [] Gee, thanks Apple... Apple G4 iBook/Powerbook battery recall Seems Apple bought a bunch of battery cells from the same place that Dell did. Oops. Need I say more? Other than... 4-6 weeks to get a replacement battery? Reportedly - Dell was shipping replacement batteries to customers the next day... Of course, we don't Know how long they (Dell) sat on this until they had enough batteries to do that. Or how long Apple has been saving up batteries to do this also... Somewhere... I saw that the return rate on something like this? 25-30% - so they don't actually NEED to have 1.8 million batteries sitting around... It's all about the cynicism... we'll see how long this takes. And... I wonder where I can find a battery (that isn't covered by the recall) for $$ while I wait for it to show up? How many people are going to go out and spend $150 on a battery when all they have to do is wait for one from Apple to show up. 8:18:10 PM    Notes []

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