Airport what?

April 8, 2005 2:02 PM

My mom recently bought an ibook shortly before going off to Argentina. She was hoping to use some public wireless connections to keep up to date with her email down there but she's having (unspecified) problems.

I like Macs but have about 15 minutes worth of experience working with them. I'm also not sure which networks are available and what their requirements are so does anyone have any links to really, really simple tutorials on general airport procedures that I could forward to her? I'm talking like "click on the apple menu. Click on the systems preferences on the apple menu" etc. I think 90% is just unfamilarity with the interface.

posted by concreteforest to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Here's a the Apple article

If she hasn't fiddled too much with the settings, there'll be a menu in the top right of the screen that looks like an upside down triangle. If she clicks on that there'll be a list of available networks. After selecting one, she needs to attempt to load a web page. She'll either get the page or be redirected to the welcome page for the network.

She shouldn't encounter any problems if she's trying to use a network intended for public use (and she's within range). Oh, very occasionally the software can get messed up and she needs to reboot. In terms of compatibility, again, an Airport-equipped Mac can connect to just about anything intended for public use.
posted by cillit bang at 3:37 PM on April 8, 2005

in south america, wifi hot spots are still scarce, but internet cafes are a dime a dozen. if your mom has trouble finding a hot spot, she can just go into an internet cafe, ask to use an ethernet cable, plug it into the ibook and surf that way. she just needs to make sure her location (under apple menu) is set to "automatic".
posted by Silky Slim at 1:55 AM on April 9, 2005

Here are four wifi hot spots in Argentina.

This site is a searchable directory of free wifi hotspots around the globe. There are probably other site like it.
posted by wsg at 3:17 AM on April 9, 2005

...or "sites."
posted by wsg at 3:20 AM on April 9, 2005

some cafe chains here in chile are starting to offer wifi, so you might find the same in argentina (the only one i can think of right now is gatsby's, but i think that's a local chain). also, if she can speak spanish she shouldn't be afraid to ask for help - when i was there a few months ago i found the people to be way more friendly than their reputation suggested (although one person did seriously screw us with prices).
posted by andrew cooke at 5:51 AM on April 9, 2005