More new gear: Airport Extreme & Mighty Mouse

Well, it’s been one of those weeks where lots of new gear seems to show (or I was procrastinating their purchase, quite possible).

Anyway, after reading a few reviews, I figured I was due for a new mouse and then comes along the Mighty Mouse from Apple. I’ve installed it and will say it’s nice, and not a big departure from the Apple Pro mouse that shipped with my iMac. I’m not a big scroller, but with the amount of computing I do, maybe I should. Not sure what’s best for carpal tunnel syndrome.

I also got the Airport Extreme wireless networking card (802.11g) and installed that promptly. While installing it in the iMac couldn’t be easier, the configuring of my mixed-mode network (B and G speeds) as well as the non-standard networking choices in OS X gave me some problems. I really need to have security enabled, and so, in the end, after reading some blogs and forums, I was finally able to make everything work using WEP 128bit encryption.

What’s funny is that even though my iMac sits about 2 feet away from the wifi router, I still don’t have a solid 4 bars on the traybar on OS X. Windows XP, on the other hand, is solid and shows 100% for signal strenght.