Airport Express sounds like crap

I have an airport express to play wireless music. 40% of the time it works fine, the other 60% is is choppy and sounds like crap. The music will stop playing or get staticky and then just stop. Whenever I do something like switch to a new website it stops playing. I'm not doing anything extremely strenuous. It seems like it can't get a good connection or something, even though we're in a small apartment.

I had this problem before at another apartment, and thought maybe a cordless phone was interfering, but now that we moved it's still a problem.

Is it an airport express problem? Or could it be a problem between my computer and the router, since all the other macs that use the airport express are fine? I often have problems with wireless signals cutting in and out in even intervals, even when I'm close to the router.

Macbook is out of warranty.

We would get an N router (i'm not familiar with the right terms, lol), but the boyfriend's G4 powerbook cannot use it.

Suggestions?

Any apartment building is bound to have cordless phones operating and other residents who likewise have a wireless network up and running. Still sounds to me like you're getting intermittent interference from somewhere.

One way to test your connection is to hook an ethernet cable direct from your modem to the MacBook (or if you have another router, from the router) and see if the signal strength holds.

The airport express like any other router works great when conditions are OK, but interference can degrade the signal just like with any other wireless device.

Regards.

And BTW, most N routers are also backwards compatible - unless you set it to N only the powerbook would be ok with it.

chscag said:

Any apartment building is bound to have cordless phones operating and other residents who likewise have a wireless network up and running. Still sounds to me like you're getting intermittent interference from somewhere

Click to expand...

could that be specific to only my computer? (my computer is a bit of a princess ) my friend's MBP works fine, and the g4 works fine.

and what do you mean by backwards-compatible? just that both of us can use it?

Yeah, kinda like how a PlayStation 2 will play PlayStation 1 games - in terms of time, it's compatible with technology 'backwards' - as in, what came before it.

skaheadpunk said:

Yeah, kinda like how a PlayStation 2 will play PlayStation 1 games - in terms of time, it's compatible with technology 'backwards' - as in, what came before it.

Click to expand...

gotcha. i hope we can get one. maybe itll solve the problem.

thanks