Hi Marty, and welcome to the WeatherCat forum,
Beautiful part of the country you live in down there. We used to live in Orange County, VA near Skyline Drive, and have been to Asheville a few times.
You have a couple of options with connecting your Mac to a data logger. I went through this same dilemma when setting up my system. Least expensive and already obvious is to run a USB cable from your console to the Mac. I think 35 feet is about the max for USB cabling.
Second, and the option I took, is to leave your Console wherever you want it. Then buy a Davis Weather Envoy, which is a small receiver to place near your Mac, and use the data logger in it. You initially need to use Davis' WeatherLink for Mac to set up the Envoy for barometric pressure, but after that you can use WeatherCat. I eventually replaced the Envoy with a second Console that I leave here on my desk.
Thirdly, is to use the Davis WeatherLink IP. This is connected to your Console with the data logger, and to your network with an Ethernet cable. You can then connect to the WLIP from your computer anywhere on the network and run WeatherCat. There is more information on how to use this option in the manual, which you can download with the free trial of WeatherCat, and Stu or others can help with this setup option. We seem to have an increasing minority of members chose this option so as not to need their laptop connected to the data logger.
Hopefully that makes sense and gives you some options to explore. For best pricing on Davis equipment, check out
Archer Trading Post and
Rainman Weather. Both have excellent reputations for prices and service. Be sure to use Rainman's instant email price quote for unadvertised prices. (Davis sets minimum advertised pricing.)
Have fun, and welcome!
Steve
