Hi,

I want to replace my 4965AGN wireless miniPCI-e from my laptop with a more compatible, out of the box working cards. I'm so thorn that I don't know what to buy anymore. I understand that there are a lot of compatible cards out there but I see some people still having problems. Can anyone help me choose the best card. These are the things that the card should handle:

1) Be able to boot in Linux, Windows, OS X.

2) Detected as Native Airport out of the box when installed in OS X. 3rd party Airport detection is also acceptable.

3) Should support basic router encryption like WEP, WPA, WPA2. I would prefer WPA2 because that is the one I use.

4) Will be supported in Snow Leopard.

I'm thorn with these miniPCI-e cards:

Dell 1390
Dell 1490
Apple Airport Extreme AR5BXB6 - Pulled from a real macbook. - I am leaning over this card bec of obvious reasons that it was pulled from a real mac, but I'm afraid that it will not work with Windows or Linux. Will it?

I need it to be cheap that is why these are the only options I have. I don't need wireless N. B/G is enough for me as long as it can connect to WPA2 encryption.

Thank you very much.

rekta,

I purchased a Gigabyte GN-WI01GT (Atheros AR5006EGS chip inside) that works great out of the box. As you noted there are some other cards (for example the Dell 1390 and Apple AirPort AR5006EXS) that will also work nicely in Leopard.

According to the specs (http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/...ProductID=2215) the Gigabyte supports WPA2. It also works fine in Windows (I'm using VirtualBox/Win XP, but it also works fine in a dual-booted Vista configuration.). I'm fairly sure I tested it with a Live Ubuntu CD when I had to do some data recovery as well.

My only concern with the Apple card, is that it will be used off of ebay. So you wouldn't be able to get (for example) a Square Trade warranty (www.squaretrade.com/).

I think I got the Gigabyte for around $30.

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MacBook Pro - have allergy to nickel in the aluminum casing. So my kid gets an expensive toy!

Gateway MX 8738 - Retail, vanilla Snow Leopard 10.6.2 (thanks kizwan!) with Chameleon RC4, modified DSDT. Upgraded to Core 2 CPU (easy to do). Upgraded to 640GB drive. Everything but SD card working. Minor niggles. GMA950 with QE/CI and *no* artifacts.

iMac (luxo/lamp) G4 with Tiger.

Hey thanks man!

I also heard a lot of good things about the gigabyte but its too expensive for me . I'm really now leaning towards the real macbook miniPCIe card but I just need a confirmation that it will work in Windows and Linux. A bonus would be knowing if WPA2 can be accessed inside osx86.

I heard that the Dell 1390/1490 are having problems with WPA2 encryption inside OSX only. I can confirm that the Dell 1390/1490 can get inside WPA2 encryption inside Windows and Linux. If someone could say that the Dell 1390 can access router encryption in OSX86, its sold! lol.

THanks.

bump - Please anyone else? I really need to ASAP. I'm sorry but thank you for your help.