Does Mac Mini have inferior Airport Card?

Question

Ok after days on the phone with numerous Apple tech reps and no answers I want to hear from other Mini users.
Problem is I cannot get the Mini to pickup the Airport Extreme base station in the other room which is only 17' away, through one wall. Have eliminated all possible interference issues. Changing channels in the Airport utility didn't help. When the Mini was in the same room as the Airport I had no connectivity issues. Airport was hard wired to an older iMac (lampshade).
Now if I move the Airport closer and in direct view of the Mini (in separate room) I can pick up the Airport on the Mini. Not a strong signal but I do get a wireless connection. Soon as I move Airport back and out of view it drops. Also if I close door to room signal drops.
Next thing I did was reverse the computer scenario. I hard wired the Mini to the Airport and placed the iMac in the other room. Had no connectivity issues here at all, in fact the iMac had a very strong signal even with the Airport placed over 20' away behind a wall and door closed. To me that seemed to eliminate any interference issues.
So next call to the Apple tech I suggested that maybe I have a bad card in my Mini. He respectfully disagreed and said the iMac has a better antenna and that is why it had no connectivity issues. So I asked him if the Mini Airport card was inferior to the iMacs, even though the iMac was about 6 years old. He said no and then said I needed to speak with higher level Apple techs. He transferred me but after 2 hours on hold I hung up.
So do I have a bad card in the Mini or is just an inferior product? Seems to me that I shouldn't have these problems connecting the Mini wirelessly. Seems absurd to have to have the Mini and Airport base station in direct view to get a connection. Anyone else with these issues? I especially want to hear from users in 12,000' MacMansions using Airport and the Mac Mini.

Answer 1

The simple answer to your question is no, the mini doesn't have an inferior Airport card. In fact, it uses a standard card that can also be found in other Apple products. However, it does have a smaller antenna, and of course the antenna is mounted inside what amounts to a metal enclosure which makes the system a little less sensitive to wifi signals - particularly if there is anything placed directly on top of the mini's casing. It also means the mini's wifi reliability is affected a little more by sources of interference in the area, thus things like microwave ovens, cordless phones, other wifi networks on the same or adjacent channels, structures which reflect or deflect radio signals etc will tend to impact on the mini's signal strength and connectivity somewhat more than might be the case with other wifi devices in the same location.
Typically you will find that even small changes in the location of the mini or wifi access point will affect signal quality. In this situation I would be inclined to download a copy of something like AP Grapher (from www.versiontracker.com) and use it to examine the strength and quality of signal, trying to find a location where the mini or access point give optimal signal strength and lowest noise.
It is also possible that while the Airport card in your mini is working perfectly well, the connection to the antenna is not firmly made. If the system has been worked on at all, this is not an unusual problem, and there have been indications of some minis being sold where the airport antenna is not firmly connected, giving poor (or even no) wifi connectivity.
I must say that at one point I had a very poor connection to my domestic wifi from a G4 mini used as a media center, such that moving data to it became quite tedious and prone to failure. I found the Airport signal strength was generally quite low, despite there being little more than about 20 feet between the system and base station. I checked the Airport base station's transmission strength and found it had been set low, so reset that to full power and that helped a great deal, but eventually replaced the Apple base station with a Belkin wifi router, and that has resolved the problem completely.
Since wifi is merely radio at a frequency and power that is susceptible to interference, deflection, absorption and degradation, even over short ranges, there can be many factors affecting signal strength and quality. Usually a bit of experimentation with positioning devices helps a great deal, but you may want to get your mini checked to ensure the antenna is correctly located and firmly connected.