Wired Ethernet: December 2008 Archives

I've been thinking about wired vs. wireless networking over the past few days as I plan a new home network in my mind.

And I remembered a device that just might solve a problem you're having.

What if you have a laptop or desktop computer that, for whatever reason, either can't or won't play nice with wireless? Either you can't get a wireless card (PCI or PCMCIA/CardBus) to work with your box, or your OS (even Windows balks at some cards) won't recognize and configure it.

So what do you do? Here are a couple of devices I've never seen offered anywhere else. They're called Wireless Ethernet Adapters, and a company called MacWireless sells them.

The way they work is that you plug an Etnernet cable into the adapter and your PC — and I imagine that this device works with Macs, as well as PCs under Windows, Linux, or any BSD. Anything that uses wired Ethernet can seemingly go wireless with this device. Even an old Sparcstation ...

There are two models available, the MacWireless 11g Ethernet Adapter with 32 milliwatts of power for $99.98 (above right) and the High Power 11g Ethernet Adapter with 400 milliwatts of power for $189.98 (left).

You manage the device with a Web browser (see the PDF instructions for the 11g adapter and the high-power 11g adapter.)

Both of these boxes are expensive. If you can use a $20 Wi-Fi card with your laptop or desktop, that's probably the way to go. But if you have an older computer that just doesn't want to work with Wi-Fi, this is a very legitimate way to bring wireless networking to your Ethernet-equipped computer.

I've known about MacWireless for quite some time. I discovered the company way back in my early This Old Mac days when I was trying to make a Macintosh Powerbook 1400 work in the modern world (under System 7 no less). There are a few helpful Web sites out there on how to modify, expand and generally use older Apple hardware. This one from Penmachine.com led me to the Orinoco WaveLAN PCMCIA card that has been so very helpful to me with just about every laptop I've owned then and since (Linux and all the BSDs LOVE this card). It also pointed me to MacWireless, which is where I discovered these interesting Wi-Fi-to-Ethernet devices.

As far as technological solutions go, this is an idea that you'd think companies like Netgear and D-Link would've picked up on. But thus far, these units from MacWireless are the only things I know of that do what they do.

MacWireless has quite a few other interesting products, including full setups for Wi-Fi routers that can live outdoors and get what's called Power Over Ethernet, meaning they don't need 120-volt electricity to work. They also offer many Wi-Fi adapters for Macintoshes from the G3 and G4 era. This one looks like a good fit for my G4. I wonder if it works with Linux and OpenBSD ...