What's a good wireless PCI card?

[KingNothing]

Price isn't really an object, but I need it by Tuesday so it has to be available locally. That means Best Buy / CompUSA / Circuit City has to carry it. I need one with the best reception since the Siemens Speedstream AP will be through a floor and on the other side of the house.

Looks like CompUSA carries models by Linksys, Netgear, Belkin, and some company called TrendWare. Suggestions?

 

[RaymondY]

I just installed the Linksys wireless (B) PCi card in my daughter's computer. Installation and receiption are great. I would highly recommend the Linksys wireless PCI card.

 

[Ionizer86]

I think the D-link 22MB/s model isn't that great (dWL-520+ or something). It takes a while to initiate, though reception is awesome once that's done. Sometimes it won't detect the router and I gotta reboot or play with the card properties and the router (DI-614+ 22Mb/s) for a bit.

 

[lordtyranus2]

I think the D-link 22MB/s model isn't that great (dWL-520+ or something). It takes a while to initiate, though reception is awesome once that's done. Sometimes it won't detect the router and I gotta reboot or play with the card properties and the router (DI-614+ 22Mb/s) for a bit.

I have the exast same card and router and it works great. No problems booting, and the 5 second initiation time isn't that big a deal. Plus, I got them cheap from newegg, when they were on rebates.

I don't use it for file transferring, just shared internet, so the speed isn't a big deal.

 

[RanDum72]

I think the D-link 22MB/s model isn't that great (dWL-520+ or something). It takes a while to initiate, though reception is awesome once that's done. Sometimes it won't detect the router and I gotta reboot or play with the card properties and the router (DI-614+ 22Mb/s) for a bit.

I have the same setup, no problem whatsoever. Do you have the latest firmware for the router and PCI card?

 

[Grant]

I just got the Dlink DWL-AG520 and it is working great.

 

[D0S3D]

i have the linksys wireless G no problems in my opion, and everything works great

 

[Ionizer86]

Yea, newest firmware. My wired DI-704P's print server doesn't always work either. It used to be flawless, but now I sometimes have to reset the router and reinitialize the printer, and even then it's not guaranteed to work. (Updated firmware on print server router).

For me, the dlink stuff works, but not as flawlessly as I would have liked.

 

[RanDum72]

It all depends where your router and PC with the PCI card is located. Wireless can act weird sometimes depending on the layout of your house/building, and how many potential interferences present.. You have to move it around (the PC) and tweak the orientation of the antenna.

 

[NateSLC]

Originally posted by: RanDum72

I think the D-link 22MB/s model isn't that great (dWL-520+ or something). It takes a while to initiate, though reception is awesome once that's done. Sometimes it won't detect the router and I gotta reboot or play with the card properties and the router (DI-614+ 22Mb/s) for a bit.

I have the same setup, no problem whatsoever. Do you have the latest firmware for the router and PCI card?

I have an early revision of the DWL-520+ that works pretty well. It worked in an old IBM Pentium 166 system, but would cause occasional hard locks on my MSI KT400 motherboard. I picked up another DWL-520+ that was a newer revision that would not work on either machine. The P 166 would not even post with the card in and the KT400 would hard lock Windows during boot, even when booting into safe mode and also during Windows setup. It caused blue screens constantly relating to pci.sys that hosed windows and caused a couple reformats.

I figured it was a bad card so I took it back and got another, same problems. DLink said it was not compatible with my system and I should get a different brand. Finally got a Belkin card that works great on either machine.

For what it's worth, I upgraded my KT400 to an Asus A7N8X Deluxe and the original early revision DLink 520+ works fine.

 

[tweeve2002]

I have a linksys wireless "G" band card, working fine for me, I like it becase it is backward compatable with the "B" band

 

[KingNothing]

I guess I forgot to mention that this is an 802.11b setup. Do the G cards offer any gains for 802.11b in reception? I don't know what kind of computer I'll be plugging the wireless card into, but I would guess it's probably no more than 4 years old.

 

[beatle]

I'm also relatively new to wireless. I would say that a G card would not have any benefits on a b network. I just bought a pair of these Netgear MA311 cards for a touch over $60. Shipping nearly killed the deal, but ordering 2 makes it more reasonable. I know Netgear is a respectable name in networking. I've also used Cisco and Microsoft wireless products with good results.

 

[charlie21]

I have a Netgear MA311 and it works really well for me. Netgear MR814 router also.

 

[Gunbuster]

I would get a USB based adapter, it gives you more flexibility for reception/placement

 

[Amorphus]

Originally posted by: D0S3D
i have the linksys wireless G no problems in my opion, and everything works great

I absolutely HATE the monitor software for everything but WinXP, though.

 

[UncleWai]

My dlink Dwl-520 (no +) sucks, make sure you don't get that.

 

[poppyq]

I have the D-link 802.11a stuff, don't get it. Half the systems I've tried the PCI cards in lock up because of the card. I had it in a system disabled, using the wired NIC, copying over the network would hang the system. As soon as I took the wireless card out (again, disabled) the problem went away. My roommate's system wouldn't even get into Windows for more than 10 seconds without hard locking. These are the DWL-A520+ and DWL-A650+ I believe. Once they're working they work great for the most part. Just don't break anything My laptop would see the AP but after entering the key it would come back saying network unavailable but then instantly would see the AP again. Finally rebooted the AP and all worked well again, but this kind of thing shouldn't be required, especially considering I had successfully established a connection between the laptop and AP the day before.