Filed under: Utilities, Macintosh
Get more out of your Airport card with AirRadar
by Jay Hathaway Jul 11th 2008 at 9:00AM
The Mac users at Download Squad love the built-in Airport cards in our Macbooks, but sometimes we wish the software were a little bit ... smarter. The menu-bar interface for Airport doesn't really give a lot of information about the available networks, and sometimes it automatically joins one you know you don't want to use. If you want to disconnect from a network without connection to another one, you have to turn your Airport off and back on. Frankly, it's annoying, and we're glad there's an app called AirRadar that makes things easier!AirRadar color-codes the available networks, so you can quickly see which ones are open or protected, and what their signal strengths are. You can tinker with colors, view a signal-noise graph, and add networks to your favorites (there's a color for that, too.) Just as importantly, you can disconnect from a network without toggling your Airport off and on. It also fixes those auto-join problems by letting you set more specfic parameters for when it should get you onto a network.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mr. Obsession said 4:32PM on 7-11-2008
Just don't go to their site if you're still running Tiger...selecting that option on the product page sends you to their Amazon Affiliate link to a Leopard retail package!
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NeoPariah said 12:39PM on 7-11-2008
While this app does have its merits, Leopard does most everything this product does. If you don't want to automatically join open networks, just uncheck "Ask to join new networks" in the Airport pane in the Network System Preferences. Holding Option while clicking the Airport menu extra will tell you the MAC address, channel, RSSI, and transmit rate of the network you're currently connected to. And if you want to disconnect from a network without connecting to another, just turn Airport off. (Why would you want to leave it on if you're not using it?)
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Jay Hathaway said 4:35PM on 7-11-2008
"(Why would you want to leave it on if you're not using it?)" - well, for me it's because there's a signal that I can barely catch from my apartment, and sometimes disconnecting and reconnecting helps.