Wretched airport reception on new Mac Mini

Question

Me and this Mac Mini are not getting on at all.
I've set this machine up right next to my iMac G5. Both are accessing the same Airport Express wireless router that is in the family room down the hall about 15 feet.
The iMac G5 is downloading at 6x the speed of the Mac Mini. To download the same file from the same site the iMac G5 d/led at 125 KB/sec while the Mac Mini then got 24-25 KB/sec. Just to make sure, I then tried out my iBook, and it also d/l'd at 125 KB/sec (the file was cyberduck).
I tried to just transfer files from the iMac G5 to the mac mini using wireless, with similar results.
Have tried moving the machine all around the room, right now it is perched by itself on a dresser with no gain in performance.
I hope I have a bum unit, or one whose antenna has come loose. If not, there's going to be a real problem with the new Mac Mini.
Already I have had to use an ethernet cable to link the mini to the iMacG5 because the Mac Mini's airport reception is so bad that it can't stream music or video from iMac--four feet away.
Ouchy. Really looking for a report from another owner of the new mini so I can tell whether I have bum machine, or if these are the new titanium powerbooks.

Answer 1

Could you guys with the mini problems run the ping test? This will make it clear if you are having the same or a different problem as the iMac crowd. I suspect that the problem is the same.
Open Terminal and type
ping -c 30 <your router IP address>
you will get 30 pings on 1 second intervals something like this
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=167.164 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=120.104 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=73.494 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=26.472 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=1.452 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=1.475 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=4.092 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=2.442 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=1.459 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=1.532 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=10 ttl=64 time=250.869 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=11 ttl=64 time=221.416 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=12 ttl=64 time=175.034 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=13 ttl=64 time=128.510 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=14 ttl=64 time=1.439 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=15 ttl=64 time=1.466 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=16 ttl=64 time=1.472 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=17 ttl=64 time=1.538 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=18 ttl=64 time=1.496 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=19 ttl=64 time=1.502 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=20 ttl=64 time=249.518 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=21 ttl=64 time=202.338 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=22 ttl=64 time=155.823 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=23 ttl=64 time=112.687 ms
The typical sequence is 6 pings of about 1 mS followed by 4 pings of about 250, 200, 150 and 100 mS. This 10 ping pattern then repeats.
- gws