Or save yourself money and try a live CD. I'm assuming that any missing drivers can be temporarily installed like on Ubuntu.This is off list topic, but I have seen weirdness in airport cards on macs especially when connecting to Apple's Airport. A cheap fix is to buy a 2nd wireless access point and make sure to use that in bridged mode so it is not acting as a router and wire that to your airport base station. I like said before trying using an external hard drive to install CentOS onto and try your wireless card and other hardware drivers. This is a free solution except for the cost of the hard drive.