Just bought a new macbook air and having major problems!! HELP!!

[puglover]

I just bout 2 macbook air's yesterday and am having major wifi problems... At my house it will drop the signal every few minutes, and when the signal isn't dropped it's VERY SLOW... I had a sony vaio before this computer and it was from 2005.. it was faster on my internet than my new macbook air. I downloaded a tv show from itunes last night (it was 1.41MB) it took almost an hour and a half to download it. I am now at a coffee shop and it's having the same problems. BOTH of the brand new macbook air's i bout are doing the same thing... Is this problem normal for the macbook air's? If so would a macbook pro be better? I'm not sure if I can even exchange it or not but, this is my first mac computer and I am very unhappy.. I'm a college student and that was a lot of money I spent on these computers, and I expected them to be better than my 2005 sony vaio. ANY ADVICE WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!! PLEASE HELP!!

[cwa107]

No, this is not normal - but I will tell you that Macs can be picky about the way some WiFi routers are setup.

In particular:

1. Make sure that SSID broadcast is ENABLED (disabling it is common practice, but this is useless as a security feature and only makes it harder for legit machines to find and maintain a connection).
2. Use WPA or WPA2 for security.
3. Make sure your router's firmware is up-to-date.

[puglover]

If I need to do that stuff to make it work with the wifi at my house, will it still have problems at other places with wifi like coffee shops, school, etc?

[cwa107]

If I need to do that stuff to make it work with the wifi at my house, will it still have problems at other places with wifi like coffee shops, school, etc?

In my experience, no. Public WiFi spots tend to be unencrypted. School WiFi will probably use WPA/WPA2 by default and will definitely broadcast SSID.

[Zurfyvision]

Please give us some info on the router brand, model, and connection speeds. Is it capable of connecting at b/g/n? Also, where is it located in your house compared to where your MBA is? How old is the router?

In the past, I have had trouble hooking up new hardware with older routers. They aren't made to last forever. You may need to upgrade your router hardware to be able to take full advantage of our MBA's full potential.

<-----Welcome to the forums and don't for get to list your MBA's specs in yout profile.

[safarisurfer]

The air is not slow on the net. Everything I download is instant. Either there is a problem with your machine or your using my grandmas router. Bring it to a apple genius if it's the wifi card takes five minutes to change.