ORiNOCO proprietary technology?

[MontysNotebook]

I keep on hearing how wonderful the ORiNOCO wireless cards are (for notebooks). Oh, and any other recommendations are welcome.

The other day I was about to buy one but then I talked to one of my computer buddies and he said that he had trouble implementing other wireless devices with the ORiNOCO system. To be specific, he brought in a 802.11g card (LinkSys) to use to test connectivity in certain areas but it would not work. (The system does use Proxim APs.) He used one of the ORiNOCO cards (also 802.11g) and it seemed to work fine.

He uses the LinkSys card at home, and it works fine! He troubleshot it, but eventually called up tech support and they sent an ORiNOCO guy over to help. He did get it working 100%, but did NOT go into specifics about what he did exactly. (Anotherwords, my friend's LinkSys card was working with the system. The tech did not use the same card as my friend's and used his own computer.)

Anybody have any comments on this? Or do you think this is just some freaky occurrence (wouldn't be the first time 😀)? Also, post any other card you'd recommend for me.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally the Orinoco line was developed by Lucent Technology. At that time they developed a chipSet for PCMCIA 802.11b Wireless Cards (AKA Orinoco Gold) that was better than the Plain Vanilla OEMs that are used by most of other manufactures.

Since that initial Lucent design the Orinoco name was bought three times over, only the name stayed. Technology wise the current Orinoco hardware is just as the rest of the crowd.

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

AAMOF, the Orinoco cards use the same chipset as half a dozen other brands... 🙂

 

[MontysNotebook]

Oh, ok. Thanks guys for clearing that up!