Extremely Annoying
Extremely Annoying
A few days ago I reported my frustration with trying to get the Apple Airport Extreme WiFi Base Station to work with a Windows XP box and I would like to thank the people who offered advice, none of which, sadly, helped any.
But thanks to Samuel Lai at Drive Deactivated the problem has been resolved and once again it is one of those frustrations that Apple heap on their users by their own annoying stupidity. And, for anyone else who may just venture here with the same problem, the resolution is painfully simple.
The Airport - at least the one sold in the UK - is preset to broadcast on channel 13. In the UK, channels 1 to 13 are all available for wifi use. In the USA however, regulations restrict users to channels 1 to 11. And PCI wifi card manufacturers almost invariably preset their card’s country setting to the US thereby excluding excluding channel 12 and thus excluding the Airport as configured out of the box. Change the channel on the Airport and as if by magic, up it pops in the Windows list of wifi networks. Instantly!
And all Apple had to do was use some common sense like all other manufacturers. But this is too much to ask. It just doesn’t seem to be the Apple way.