Re: [Hampshire] Decent PCI wireless cards

On Wed, Feb 07, 2007 at 16:43:28 +0000, Paul Tansom wrote:
> Does anyone have any recommendations for decent PCI wireless network
> cards? I'm not worried about Linux support here (well, I do want Linux
> support, but that's not the question I'm asking). What I'm interested in
> is quality of connection and compatibility with WAPs.

Not sure how helpful this will be, but I strongly recommend avoiding the
Netgear WG311v3. I bought this card to install into a mate's Windows XP
Home machine. The installation went smoothly, with the exception that
the drivers/software, for some reason, forced the use of the ctrl-alt-del
logon sequence rather than the normal user choice screen (I believe this
is rectifiable with a registry edit).

However, in the following weeks he reported an increase from one BSOD in
roughly a year, to maybe one per week. I can only assume this was the
fault of the Netgear drivers, since to my knowledge (and his), nothing
else was changed at that time. Additionally, the wireless connection was
sporadically dropping. When the connection was up, the bandwidth was
insufficient to sustain acceptable quality from online radio stations.
This was using a Netgear wireless router (DG834PN?), with the PC ~10m
from the router, but with some metallic obstacles in the line of sight.

I replaced it with a "cheapest and best" card from eBay, based on the
Ralink RT2561 and with an external aerial. I believe it was identical
to item no. 270084936910. Whilst it's relatively early days yet, he is
quite pleased and said that listening to streaming radio no longer poses
a problem. It is claimed that it is supported in Linux. I downloaded
the GPL drivers out of curiosity but haven't used them so can't comment
on them.

--
Neil O'Brien