802.1X capable card for Pre-AirPort Macs

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It looks like I found a wireless card that does work with 802.1X (other than Apple-branded cards) for users of older Macintoshes. The MacWireless 11g Card works fine in a student's Lombard with OS X 10.3. This is the same student who had tried the misleading D-Link card in the past, and she bought this one on my suggestion: So, if you've got any users out there who have pre-AirPort Macs that they want to get on an 802.1X network, this is the only solution I've found so far, it uses the integrated Apple AirPort drivers, so setup is identical to the AirPort cards. We're using PEAP and MSCHAPv2 here, and so far it seems to be working great, even if this 333Mhz G3 is a bit slow.

Secret AAC Support for Mac TiVo users

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The new TiVo Desktop software for Macintosh (version 1.9) will check to see if you have Lame installed (packaged here), and if so, will let you play back your AAC files from iTunes through your TiVo and any TV or stereo system you have connected to it. This isn't documented anywhere, so it looks like someone either snuck it in, or they aren't ready to support it until 2.0, but for those of us who didn't want to re-rip our entire music collections to play them back through our TiVos, it's great news.

It's a feature!

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This satirical Mac Mini review has an hilarious final paragraph. [via Macintouch]:

"So is the mini a maxi value? For me, clearly, no. When I consider that a good deal of my time is spent running applications like Disk Defragmenter, Scandisk, Norton AV, Windows Update and Ad-Aware--none of which are available for the Mac platform--it doesn't make sense for me to "switch" to a Mac at this time"

That pretty much sums up my reasons to get a Mac, you spend all your time using it and not fixing it.

DLink Stinks - Beware the DWL-G650X which has no 802.1X

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Just a word of warning about the DLink DWL-G560X wireless card, DLink sells this card exclusively for Macs, and claims numerous times on their web site (and in the PDF data sheet and in the specifications) that it will work with 802.1X: Except that there isn't actually any 802.1X support!!!!!!!!!

I had a student bring it in with her Lombard today, and there's nothing in the utility to configure 802.1X. I called their Tech Support, and I slowly repeated myself about three times, they confirmed that the web site is wrong. The card only supports WPA-PSK and WEP, which are consumer-grade encryption at best.

Considering the student's father specifically bought this card for 802.1X support, I hope they're able to return it, but I just didn't want anyone else to fall victim to the same trap. D-Link claimed that they'd change the web site, but since this is how "Ejaz Mahfuz" wrote up my call, I doubt it's going to happen soon:

  • In the product manual there is no option to setup the utiliyt with the security 802.1x.
  • Neither it says in the local websit.
  • But the product description on the site is not right about the security about the 802.1x.