Hi Marie, It's not a problem going from Europe to the US, the problem occurs when travelling the other way. The reason is that the range of channels which, by law, we're allowed to broadcast on is greater in Europe. So for example, if you have a router broadcasting on channel 13, a US Mac with a US wireless card would not pick it up because it is only configured (again by law) to receive channels 1-11.
For the hackers among you, there is a fix involving the creation of a bootable usb-based Linux distro, booting your Mac using this, and using various tools to rewrite the PROM on the wireless card. All seemed like too much work to me to be honest so I just changed the configuration on my router <smile> Cheers Dónal -----Original Message----- From: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com [mailto:macvisionar...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of marie Howarth Sent: 15 April 2010 12:28 To: macvisionaries@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Non-US people buying a Mac in the US: Warning. That's interesting. When my mac came to the US with me, I had no issues of this. my mac was set up on my friend's network in her home. Hmm, very interesting. On 15 Apr 2010, at 12:20, Dónal Fitzpatrick wrote: > Hi all, > > I intended to post this months ago and forgot. On a trip to the > States back in January I decided to take advantage of the excellent > exchange rate and buy a 13" MBP. I saved a fortune I assure you. > > However, on returning home I discovered something I wasn't previously > aware of. The wireless card in the US models is actually configured > differently from those sold in Europe. The reason is this. FCC > regulations in the States means that wireless routers only broadcast > on channels 1-11. In Europe, we can broadcast on channels 1-13. So, > wireless cards on Mac machines purchased in the US are only set up to operate on channels 1-11. > All of my routers were configured to broadcast on channel 13, so my > nice shiny new machine purchased in the US didn't see any of my routers. > > It was a very simple fix to adjust the channels downwards, and all is > now fine. However if you go to, say a public WIFI area, or are using > your machine on a network where you can't control the channel on which > the wireless signal is broadcast, it might, just might, be a problem > for you to purchase your machine in the US. As an aside, for anyone > travelling to Europe (or Japan) with a US machine, if you can't pick > up a wireless signal that others can, this could be a reason. > > This may, and probably will, affect only a few people but I pass it on > for what it's worth. > > Cheers > > Dónal > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
