Apple ibook / PC - Wireless Router

Tony_Soprano

A real tech question for someone here...

I have a PC which is connected via a Wireless ADSL Router to the internet.

I want to buy an Apple ibook with a wireless card. Can I connect to the same wireless router as my PC uses and surf the internet at the same time as using the internet on my PC?

I dont really want to have to buy a separate Apple Airport just to surf the net from the ibook.

Does this make sense?

Can anybody help on this subject?

Thanks (or not depending on the response)

oldrimes

Yes, it should all work. Worth checking whether your wireless access point is 802.11b or 802.11g (g is much faster, but usually you can mix b and g devices, just means that things will be slower).

Sometimes you can get additional 'enhanced' speeds on wireless by using the same hardware manufacturers at both ends, but its at an additional cost.

You may have to change one or two settings on the wireless access point, but I would expect it all to work.

Tony_Soprano

Thats good news - cheers.

Another one then... I have a printer connected to my PC via USB. Would I be able to print from wireless apple ibook to it. If not how would be the best/cheapest way to go about this?

Since this is a 'money saving' site - does anyone know the cheapest new or cheapest used place to get an ibook with wifi enabled?

Dude

Even Apple stick to wifi standards! Apple are now shipping all iBooks with pre-installed wireless cards (802.11g or as apple call it airport extreme cards). These will work fine in a mixed configuration environment (e.g. PC and Apple).

Apple OSX allows SMB therefore will do windows file sharing and should be ok to work with your USB printer plugged into your router.

goldentouch

Yes, I do this.
One PC, 3 Windows laptops and one Apple iBook. I have a Belkin router and they also pick up next door's Linksys.

Tony_Soprano

Thanks all for sharing your knowledge. The only probem I can think of right now, is that my router does not have a usb connection for the printer. The printer is hooked up to a PC running windows. I would certainly like to be able to print to this printer from the ibook and the PC. But how?

Dude

You probably will need to look at purchasing a print server. The other obvious way would be to set up printer sharing, however I think you may encounter problems trying to get an OSX machine to see a shared printer on a PC.