Wireless & airport extreme queries!

hi guys.

Last week i brought my new MB to a cafe which provides free wi-fi & my MB worked fine on that. Then i brought my MB and my old Acer laptop to a friend's place (I am typing on the Acer).

So anyway, the Acer connected to the wireless fine after I typed in the WEP key but MB refuse to connect. It is wrtten "There was an erroe joining the AirPort network XXX".

So I was wondering if it could be the compatibility of the ISP or something? Anyway I can put it right?

IF the ISP does not support Mac, does the Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station come in handy & what does it do exactly?..

thanks guys.

I noticed that sometimes an ASCII key won't work when using WEP encryption. So you have to convert it to Hex. Use this ASCII to Hex converter and try using the resulting code as the WEP password (be sure to get rid of the percent sign before entering the code)

When I was setting up my wireless router for my PC, and setting up a WEP password for it, the tech support person I was talking to told me to put a dollar sign $ in front of the password when I signed onto the network from my mac.

I would highly suggest getting your friend to upgrade to WPA, barring any devices on his network that don't support the security feature. It's much more secure than WEP and also saves you the hassle.