Mobile connectivity options on notebooks - what to get?

[yacoub]

For laptops today there are so many options offered for ways to connect them to the Internet. Simply going to Dell's site and building a laptop will present you with nearly a dozen connectivity-related options, including several 802.11 wireless cards of various types (a/b/g/n), bluetooth, etc.

What are the recommended connectivity options to look for in a laptop aside from the normal Gigabit Ethernet NIC? What wireless options, in other words.

Are any of them fads that either aren't widely used or likely to die?

 

[Brainonska511]

A wireless b/g card is good enough for most people. Wireless A is not very prevalent and is mostly out of the picture at this point. Wireless N is moving forward in the market, but still has very little penetration since many existing wireless networks are B/G. BlueTooth is good if you use devices that also use it (such as a cell phone or mouse). There are also cell-phone provider options, so you can connect to the internet when there is no wireless network nearby, but those require a data-plan.

Gigabit Ethernet is also not necessarily a standard feature on notebooks. You're only likely to find that on higher end notebooks. The rest of them will have 10/100 ethernet NICs.