What is the best wireless pc card?

[wyvrn]

I have a Dlink, and its performance is average. I have heard Orinoco and Aironet (Cisco) are the best. What about netgear, actiontec, zyxel, linksys, lucent, etc. and where do they fall on the quality chart?

 

[JackMDS]

Conventional Wisdom claims:

Orinoco silver (64-bit encryption) can be found for $75.

Orinoco Gold (128-bit encryption) can be found for $90.

 

[toshiba3020]

3com with xjack. No matter how high quality a card may be, you could bust the antenna right off.

 

[wyvrn]

Who sells the Orinoco's?

 

[ktwebb]

Pricewatch is a good place to start, or any other lowball website that lists competing prices. If money is no object, the Cisco 350 is the best client card. Easily. The antenna is integrated on the card and will not break off. I would only be concerned with the antenna breaking on those cards that have detachable antennas cases. I've seen the seal in the middle of the antenna casing on a Cisco card seperate. That after heavy abuse. By me. Still worked like a charm with no disernable loss. The X-Jack is a nice feature. I'd like to see some performance tests for it vs other branded Wi-Fi NIC's. And if it is competitive, adopted by other vendors, although 3Com may have some kind of copyright or patent on it. Orinco silver or gold does seem to be the best bang for the buck.

 

[SaigonK]

I agree with ktwebb - 95% of my usage has been Cisco AP's and Cisco wireless cards.
I have tried the LinkSys seems ok but not like my Cisco!

 

[manly]

I just upgraded from a D-Link DWL-650 PC card to an ORiNOCO Gold PC card.

Sustained throughput improved by 2-3 times.

Cisco gear is beyond the reach for many of us, and it's not definitely not the price/performance leader.

 

[cipher00]

I've had luck with the SMC cards, but I'll defer to others in their opinion of the Orinoco cards. One point, however: not all cards (SMC included) support XP; it appears to have something to do with the chipset used and there appears to be a bit of a muddle about how to get around this for now.

 

[wyvrn]

Well I ordered an Orinoco Silver from overstock.com for $64 (with 20 off 60 new order coupon). Can't wait!

 

[sofasloth]

I've used a Linksys wireless card, and I hated it! I had to use old drivers and the config utility to get WEP to work at all. I sold the card and bought a Xircom unit with 128bit encryption. The Xircom is fantastic (and supposedly made by Cisco) and even works great in my iPaq.