How to be wireless like me

Everywhere I go, loyal Fork In The Road readers stop me in the street and say "Josh, how can I be as wireless as you?"

(Actually, most of the people who stop me in the street are either looking for directions or trying to convert me to their religion, but work with me here)

To live the wireless life, first of all, you need a Mac. That part's key. To keep all your options open, the Mac you buy should have both AirPort Extreme (802.11 b/g) and Bluetooth installed. For future-proofing, you should also have a Cardbus slot as well. Apple's PowerBook 12" (1.33 GHz, SuperDrive) would be ideal for this, but lacks the requisite CardBus slot. I prefer the PowerBook 15" (1.5 GHz, SuperDrive), which is my tool of choice (in a different configuration), or if size is no object, then try the PowerBook 17", which has the spectacular 17" display from the G4 iMacs somehow wedged into a notebook computer. I think they used a shrinking ray.

To any of these systems, make sure you have at least 512MB of RAM, and preferably 768MB or even more. Apple's MacOS X is a Unix, and it will think you for the extra RAM (as well as save you battery life by paging less often to disk).

Now that you have the Mac, buy an AirPort Extreme Base Station, which is a nice, easy-to-use 802.11b/g base station from Apple that costs somewhat more than most third-party ones, but works really well with MacOS X and supports Windows as well. The new AirPort Express is also nice - significantly cheaper and handy for the traveling user. AirPort Express can also be used to extend the range of your existing AirPort Express-based network (or some 3rd party networks, with appropriate hacking), and can be used in conjunction with iTunes to stream music to your stereo. The USB port on the Express can also charge an iPod or support a USB printer.

OK. The WiFi network exists (the marketing name for 802.11b/g). Without any sort of antenna enhancement, you can now wander up to 150 feet from the station and still have a network connection. Kinda cool. Real-world results aren't as good, of course, it all depends on your home's construction (a friend of mine lives in a house with steel mesh in the walls - his house is effectively a Faraday cage that blocks virtually all signals except at the windows). Dr. Bott sells a line of external antennas for the AirPort Extreme Base Station (the ExtendAIR series) that can boost the signal either in an omnidirectional or directional form. QuickerTek also has a line of range extender products as well. Using a Lucent antenna mated via Dremel to my old AirPort base gave me a range boost of about 100 extra feet in real-world usage back when I had it. I could sit at the pizza parlor across the street from my house and still use my home network.

Of course the only time I did that was just to prove that I could, but it was still cool.

With a WiFi card, you can use open public networks and fee-for-use public "hotspots", like the ones you can find in most Kinkos and Starbucks locations. Several downtowns have free cooperative wireless nets, like Boston's Newbury Street and my own downtown Salem. Using tools like KisMAC (a port of the popular took Kismet to the MacOS X platform), you can look for other networks available in your area as well.

Cool, but there's more. Bluetooth capability opens up yet more possibilities for you. With a compatible cell phone and data plan, you can use your cell phone to get a moderate-speed Internet connection (generally ranging from 20 to 150 kbps). As of right now only cellular providers that use the popular GSM standard (AT&T Wireless, Cingular, and T-Mobile) offer Bluetooth-compatible phones, but Verizon Wireless has announced one for their CDMA network that is expected in about a month. The other two major US cell companies (Sprint PCS and Nextel) do not currently offer Bluetooth at all.

All the providers have support for moderate speeds, but Bluetooth adds the ability to use your phone as a modem without any wires involved. After "pairing" your phone with the PowerBook, you can set up a network connection fairly easily with the three GSM providers (the phone will use the data capability, known as GPRS). GPRS plans range from $5 to $30 per month on average, with the cheapest ones metering data usage and the more expensive plans offering unlimited data. See my late June-early July blog entries for more on getting this to work.

And now, a use for the Cardbus slot: most carriers offer PC cards that are meant to allow a laptop data-only access. Verizon, for instance, offers several cards that access their faster Express Network, but only one has a Mac driver. But the Cardbus interface is key to the future cellular data networks that all the players are frantically developing - the higher data speeds to come will be far faster than the 750k maximum of Bluetooth communications.

I'll be posting a Part 2 in the next few days with some cool stuff you can do using the wireless capabilities we've just given you. Stay tuned for more...