The new 802.11ac Wi-Fi networking standard has been available to consumers for several years, but only recently did Apple add the feature to its line of portable and desktop Macs. Ecs nforce6m a drivers for mac. Introduced with the 2013 MacBook Airs at – and subsequently rolled out to the 2013 model year,, and – 802.11ac provides and network robustness than the old 802.11n standard.
Maximum range BearExtender technology combines a proprietary high sensitivity receiver with a powerful 1200 mW transmitter for long range Wi-Fi at an affordable price. This is 2- 4 times the power of built-in Wi-Fi cards built-in to most laptops. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for BearExtender 1200 Mac USB WiFi Signal Booster Antenna at Amazon.com. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users.
While new Mac owners with a prerequisite can enjoy all of 802.11ac’s benefits, the millions of Mac owners with pre–2013 models have been left out in the cold. Thankfully, the new is here to offer at least some of these owners a novel solution, and the promise of near-native 802.11ac speeds. The company loaned us a unit for review, and we’ve spent the last few weeks putting it through our testing process.
Read on for our impressions, benchmarks, and pictures. Overview The BearExtender Turbo is an $80 USB device that contains an external 802.11ac chip and antennas. With the ability to upgrade a Mac’s internal Wi-Fi card a, the BearExtender Turbo’s goal is to bring that same 802.11ac capability to an older Mac via USB. The device itself is tiny, with a footprint just a hair longer than a standard sized credit card. The official measurements given by BearExtender list 3.5 inches wide, by 2.2 inches deep, by 0.4 inches tall (not including antennas). The base is constructed from white plastic, a design which would have blended in great with Apple products from 2004, but clashes a bit in today’s world of aluminum and glass devices.
Two adjustable, and removable, antennas extrude from the top-right side. A single “Micro B” USB 3.0 port is accessible on the left side, and users will find a 2-foot USB 3.0 cable in the box, along with a CD containing the required software and setup instructions. The BearExtender Turbo is not a perfect substitute for native 802.11ac, but it Can offer a large improvement over 802.11n Overall, the BearExtender Turbo is lightweight, almost surprisingly so. The plastic construction and small form factor result in a net weight of just 1.8 ounces. This gives the device an almost cheap look and feel, especially compared to solid heft and density of some modern Macs.
The BearExtender Turbo is so light, in fact, that the stiffness of the USB cable can frequently cause the base to flip up on one end, because there’s simply not enough weight to counteract the moderate torque from the cable. Thankfully, such an occurrence doesn’t affect the functionality of the device, and with a little careful cable placement, most users won’t have an issue. Plus, the BearExtender Turbo’s size makes it ideal for travel, and the less weight added to our laptop bags, the better. Setup & Usage Unfortunately, the BearExtender Turbo isn’t truly “plug and play;” users will need to for it to work.
Setup consists of installing the BearExtender software (which requires a reboot), and then enabling a new network service in System Preferences > Network (the software guides you through this process). The magic of adding 802.11ac to older Macs requires specialized drivers and software, so once everything is installed, you’ll use the BearExtender Turbo software, and not OS X’s built-in Wi-Fi management, to join and configure your wireless networking connections.
Wifi Adapter For Mac Pro
In addition to relearning old Wi-Fi management habits, the necessity of the BearExtender Turbo’s software also leads to a few issues. First, you’ll need to launch the BearExtender app to connect to a new to a Wi-Fi network or reconnect if the connection is lost. If the app is quit or crashes, you won’t be able to reestablish or change your settings until the app is relaunched. Second, it takes a bit longer to get a valid connection, compared to the built-in OS X network manager, when waking a Mac from sleep. In our testing with a 2013 13-inch MacBook Air, it took about 10 seconds from opening the lid until we could get a network connection with the BearExtender Turbo, compared to less than 5 seconds with the built-in networking.