User Profile for mikep9

Wireless Driver 3.3 (Mac OS X)

No WPA for you! But lots of happy fun kernel panics.  

OrangeWare seems to have only done the bare minimum to get this driver to work. It will associate/communicate with Open and WEP-protected 802.11b/g networks, but that's about it. How much does it suck? Let me count the ways... 1.) The control panel layout and operation is absolutely byzantine. 2.) While it teases you with WPA support, it doesn't really work. (Only later did I find the fine print on OrangeWare's web site about that.) 3.) Selecting "Power off Card" in the OS, removing the wireless card, then reinserting that or any other PC card will cause a kernel panic every time. 4.) If your wireless card has a retractable antenna, unsleeping the laptop before deploying the antenna will cause a kernel panic about 75% of the time. 5.) OrangeWare has no plans to finish implementing WPA support in their driver. Their reply also failed to address the kernel panic issues I brought to their attention. If you need a modern wireless card for an older Mac, buy a card with a broadcom 802.11g chipset. Most of the cards listed here http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/?go=devices should be recognized right away by MacOS as an "AirPort Extreme" card. [alert admin]

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Saturday, March 31 2007 @ 02:11 PM PDT

Wireless Driver 3.3 (Mac OS X)

No WPA for you! But lots of happy fun kernel panics.  

Too bad this driver isn't as nice as the 3com 3CRXJK10075 card I bought to go with it. OrangeWare loses major points for doing what appears to be the bare minimum to get this driver working. The card will associate with and talk to open or WEP-protected B/G networks, and that's about it. Even though the positively byzantine control panel teases you with it, it WILL NOT do WPA. (Confirmed by reading the fine print on their website.) *Powering off the card from within OS X, removing it then re-inserting it or any other card, will cause a kernel panic every time. *If you have a card like the 3com X-Jack with a retractable antenna, unsleeping the laptop before extending the antenna will cause a kernel panic 75% of the time. Their customer support was pretty disappointing too. I wrote them a very civil email outlining my issues with the card. They wrote back telling me that they were _never_ going to implement WPA in that driver and they didn't address the kernel panic issues at all. Dear Orangeware: please go Chapter 7 before you can spew any more bad software into the world. [alert admin]

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Saturday, March 31 2007 @ 01:36 PM PDT

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