Ever since I purchased my iMac back in March, it has been plagued with wireless dropouts. It’s not the worst thing in the world, they usually occur every couple hours or so and are worse while doing certain tasks. For most normal web surfing, it’s not a problem. It doesn’t make the computer unusable, but for tasks that require a long, steady connection (like Skype), Leopard is a disaster. On my iMac, Skype lasts about two minutes before shutting down. On my little Eee PC, I can talk on Skype forever in full camera mode and it never dies. And this is at the same desk as my Mac.

Since Leopard was released back in October 2007, more and more complaints about wireless connectivity have been leveled on message boards across the Internet, with a host of potential fixes being proffered. Some claim the fixes work, others have not met with any success, including myself. I have tried everything beyond downgrading my OS. Leopard’s newest patch, 10.5.4, has also not fixed the problem.

Apple has a lot to answer for here. How come it takes ten months to figure out a wireless connectivity problem? I’ve read from different sources that dealing with Airport coding is “hard.” As much as I love everything about OS X and my Mac, Windows makes wireless work, and for a lot of users, Leopard isn’t.

Nothing is working. One user is reporting the problem on four Macs of his. Every time he thinks the problem is fixed, it returns.

I suppose I could just go get a thirty foot Ethernet cable and try that out.

If anybody has found a fool-proof fix for this, let me know. I’ll update you if I find one. I just switched my router from 802.11n to 802.11g. I heard that worked. It’s only about the fifteenth solution I’ve tried.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 25th, 2008 at 11:07 amand is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.