I wanted better airport/802.11b reception so I looked into third party antennas. Then I found I could get a Macsense 802.11b card for $99 but nobody had them. So on a lark I bought a Linksys 802.11b/g card for $80 from CompUSA and was going to find some third party drivers or hacks to make it work.
Well lo and behold I read that as of Airport 3.1, Apple now supports some of the more popular cards, such as those based on the Broadcom chips! My linksys is, so I plugged it in….
Next I had four airports listed, oops heh. So I pulled out my airport card. Now I had just the one. For some reason the linksys won’t auto log into my hidden WEP network, so once I use the Airport menu to type in the network name/password, it works!
I did a quick test and where I used to get 1-2 bars, and virtually lost connection, I now get 3-4 bars, depending on how I sit. Once I go to the living room, I am 4 bars no matter what (whereas before, I used to be able to drop connection by sitting wrong)
Thanks Apple for supporting third party cards, after you dorked up the tibook with no reception! And hey, now I am ready for 802.11g, and can move this card to another laptop at will!
Update:
I used Terminal and did:
sudo rm /var/db/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.xml sudo rm /var/db/SystemConfiguration/preferences.xml
And now I am down to one Airport entry, and the password sticks!