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Okay, I've never seen this done before, and if anyone has please tell me where. A lot of people who have nonsupported wifi cards use USB wifi right? but USB wifi can be slow, unreliable, and on a laptop easily bumped, broken off, and simply damaged. This is my idea, most people have working ethernet ports as ethernet is highly standardized, and almost everyone's works on almost anything, well why not have a small antenna running out of the port, it would work out of the box on any computer, no matter the OS, it could be small, stronger, and it clips in rather than just sits there like USB so it'd be a lot harder to be bumped out, or lost. The only flaw would be a lack of security features, but this could be easily remedied with optional third party software. the main advantage here is drivers, you need none =D if they're out there please tell me, I'd buy one rather than use a USB as it'd be stronger, and probably faster, and the big one, probably a lot cheaper.

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Its a decent enough idea.. But remember, companies design laptops under the assumption that all hardware built into the computer is supported by the Operating System (e.g. Windows), and is not built to accommodate for hackintoshes - and most hardware for the last couple of years do have wireless cards, making this idea pretty redundant..

 

Now if this were to be designed by a hackintosh user rather than a multi-national, the case would be different, but then mass-development would not be easy lol...

Unfortunately, your idea is not a new one at all. The device exists, and it's known as an Ethernet to Wireless Bridge, the kicker being that they're much larger than you describe, it's a little box that looks sort of like an access point, and it hooks to your computer via ethernet. It is impossible to miniaturize the transceiver and the other circuitry to the form factor that you describe.

 

Fun trivia: the original xbox used a wireless bridge to get on xbox live.

 

More fun trivia: wireless bridges are relatively expensive, around $80-$100; if you're using a Linksys wifi router and have an old Linksys access point laying around of the same type (A,B,G,N,etc.), some of them can be set up in wireless bridge mode.

 

Oh, and BTW to the OP; with USB2.0 transfer speeds being 480Mbps, and most wireless connections maxing out at 160Mbps or so (best case wireless-N scenario) the USB interface isn't really a bottleneck. My wifi speeds are identical to my wired speeds.

  • 2 weeks later...

yeah, game adapters work like that too, they're 30 or 40 dollars and have one or two ports on them, the thing is they're fairly empty inside that big box, could one not put a small fan on it and make it small enough to sit off the side of any laptop, and the thing about companies expecting their device to work on any standard platform is true, but why do such a thing if it could work on any platform no matter what

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yeah, game adapters work like that too, they're 30 or 40 dollars and have one or two ports on them, the thing is they're fairly empty inside that big box, could one not put a small fan on it and make it small enough to sit off the side of any laptop, and the thing about companies expecting their device to work on any standard platform is true, but why do such a thing if it could work on any platform no matter what
The Ethernet bridge wifi adapter requires special software to configure and connect to AP's, finding one for the Mac means buying one which already supports the Mac and has Mac software so buying just any old bridge wont work.
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There is a demand for wireless adapters and we can all agree on that but cost seems to be a driving factor and it seems the hacintosh community for the most part are people who want a solution that is really cheap while a few want a solution that requires nothing more than plug n play, these small few are interested in higher compatibility.

 

They realize that getting a USB device is a solution but not a very good one, TM doesn't work right, TC will never work and dropped, unstable connections isn't acceptable.

 

I have already had both Broadcom and Atheros design and build (OEM) cards for the hacintosh community based on a specific information/specifications and I have each of the finished products tested and approved for a production run but have not authorized the production run due to the costs involved.

 

It's nice to hear I can get 802.11a/b/g/n cards that connect at 300mbps in OS X at $22.00 a piece for a desktop PCIe card that is an apple AirPort card but for that price the quantity is 10,000 which means the money up front is $220,000.00 and doing smaller quantities drives the price of the card up significantly, at 100 cards my cost is $94.00 which is a decent retail price but not such a good OEM price.

 

I can get 1,000 of the cards made at my cost of $67.00, if I can get 300 pre-orders at a retail cost of $90.00 (I have to package and include drivers which isn't free) I'll have a run done otherwise I'll just continue to be the only one who enjoys the benefits that these cards have to offer.

 

The chances of anyone developing this product is pretty slim unless the demand for it becomes extremely high, I've concluded that having anything designed and built for the benefit of the community is a waste of time, people in the community have the mentality that they would rather pay $40.00 for a USB device that gives them some kind of 11n wireless functionality with a lot of effort required rather than spend $100.00 on a PCI or PCIe card that is plug and play.

 

I bought 2 new cards monday Aug 4th just to get the antennas for some R&D work, have since procured replacement antennas and I can't sell the cards for 50% of what I paid for them and I rebranded the cards so they would be recognized plug and play AirPort Extreme desktop PCI adapters and include windows drivers for the cards but they still opt for that USB device with the unknown chipset that they don't even know will work and have to struggle to find drivers for.

 

Even then they are too dumb to know that they might have to edit a file or two to get it working if it has a supported chipset but the ID's don't match so they make repeated posts that they can't get it working but provide no details that would allow anyone intelligent to help them.

Until your idea goes into production one could actually integrate a wireless AP into a PC.

 

Here's a picture of a satellite receiver with a built in wireless AP. It's a german modell which is able to run Linux which makes it very popular :P. But anyways... the AP is on the left side, the LAN cable is soldered to the mainboard and the antenna is mounted on the left side of the back. 

 

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