Any wireless 54g laptop card reviews about?

I had to return a 3Com 3CRPAG175 wireless a/b/g laptop card last week after
three months of unsuccessful attempts to get it working properly in my Dell
Inspiron 8000. The problem was intermittent system freezes, either for a few
seconds or until a full power cycle. The problem only occurred at 11g speeds
under Win XP. It was fine at 11b speeds under XP or at b and g speeds under
Win Me.

I need to get an alternative card and would like to find any comparative
reviews but have had no luck finding any. I need 802.11b/g compatibility but
do not need 802.11a.

I like the look of the SMC SMC2536W-AG card, which does have a/b/g modes but
the attraction is the high power output. Unfortunately the price is high
too, in the UK(£60 delivered vs $75 in the US), although not as high as the
3Com card it is to replace.

The Asus WL-107g card also seems to read well from the sales blurb and is a
good bit cheaper so that also looks interesting but finding reviews is as
impossible as finding hens' teeth.

Lastly I'm thinking about the Netgear WG511 as I have a Netgear router and
the card is fairly cheap.

But before making my choice I would like to try to get independent
comparative reviews of these and any similar alternative b/g cards. Does
anyone know any good review articles?

Thanks,
Tim.
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Tiny Tim

What about the Dell Truemobile 1300 b/g Wireless card?

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/P...=19&iCompatid=


I have had pretty good luck with this card. Particularly since you currently have a Dell laptop.

Ed Kivell


"Tiny Tim" <_(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:VB%nc.2456$(E-Mail Removed)...\
> I had to return a 3Com 3CRPAG175 wireless a/b/g laptop card last week after
> three months of unsuccessful attempts to get it working properly in my Dell
> Inspiron 8000. The problem was intermittent system freezes, either for a few
> seconds or until a full power cycle. The problem only occurred at 11g speeds
> under Win XP. It was fine at 11b speeds under XP or at b and g speeds under
> Win Me.
>
> I need to get an alternative card and would like to find any comparative
> reviews but have had no luck finding any. I need 802.11b/g compatibility but
> do not need 802.11a.
>
> I like the look of the SMC SMC2536W-AG card, which does have a/b/g modes but
> the attraction is the high power output. Unfortunately the price is high
> too, in the UK(£60 delivered vs $75 in the US), although not as high as the
> 3Com card it is to replace.
>
> The Asus WL-107g card also seems to read well from the sales blurb and is a
> good bit cheaper so that also looks interesting but finding reviews is as
> impossible as finding hens' teeth.
>
> Lastly I'm thinking about the Netgear WG511 as I have a Netgear router and
> the card is fairly cheap.
>
> But before making my choice I would like to try to get independent
> comparative reviews of these and any similar alternative b/g cards. Does
> anyone know any good review articles?
>
> Thanks,
> Tim.
> --
> Please remove leading underscore to reply by email.
>
>

> "Ed Kivell" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:JP3oc.23354$(E-Mail Removed) et...
> What about the Dell Truemobile 1300 b/g Wireless card?
>
>
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/P...End=&sku=430-0
>
741&mnfsku=&SearchType=&Page=productlisting.aspx&s pagenum=1&Pageb4Search=&In
Stock=&items_per_page=25&
>
orderby=&mnfname=&brand=&SubmitSearch=&image_flag= True&refurbished=&c=us&l=e
n&cs=19&iCompatid=
>
>
> I have had pretty good luck with this card. Particularly since you
currently have a Dell laptop.
>
> Ed Kivell

Thanks for the tip. The problem is that that is in the US and I'm in the UK.
I tried to set up a purchase from the US site but there are no options for
shipping to the UK. Plus, by the time I've paid for international shipping
and got hammered for import duty/VAT and handling at this end it wouldn't be
very economic. And if there was another problem and I needed to make a
warranty claim etc..........

The Dell UK site has its own little selection of wireless adapters here -

http://dellware.euro.dell.com/dellst...e&co=&c=UK5823

and none are Dell branded. There is an Intel mini-PCI adapter, which would
be great but how the hell do I fit one of those and where would the antenna
go? They also have options from Netgear(11b only), Belkin and Linksys but I
can buy those for less elsewhere.

A lot of this stuff also seems to be very much "last year's model" and the
manufacturer websites still talk about the "upcoming" 11g standards for
these products. At least with the Asus and SMC products I mentioned they
seem to be much newer, and to have been designed after 11g standards were
ratified. I know firmware upgrades should take care of any issues but I'd
feel happier with a product built on the back of real world field experience
rather than prototypes from a year ago. My girlfriend's Acer Ferrari
completely floored the performance of my 3Com card in terms of signal
strength, measured with Netstumbler, and I'm looking for a high performance
card rather than an "also-ran". I know a PCMCIA card cannot compete with an
antenna sewn into the back of the screen but I'd still like to get the best
performance I can for a realistic spend.

This is the reason for my interest in the Asus and SMC cards, which cite a
range of 330m outdoors or 40m indoors here -
http://uk.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=WL-107g&langs=11 - and an output power of
100mw (3* the norm) and extended range here -
http://www.smc-europe.com/english/products/wirel.html# respectively. But I'd
like to find some comparative reviews to confirm the claims by these
manufacturers. If there actually is very little in it then I may as well get
eBuyer's own branded card for £25 inclusive rather than the £60 that the SMC
card will cost.

Tiny Tim wrote:
<snip>

> This is the reason for my interest in the Asus and SMC cards, which
> cite a range of 330m outdoors or 40m indoors here -
> http://uk.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=WL-107g&langs=11 - and an output
> power of 100mw (3* the norm) and extended range here -
> http://www.smc-europe.com/english/products/wirel.html# respectively.
> But I'd like to find some comparative reviews to confirm the claims
> by these manufacturers. If there actually is very little in it then I
> may as well get eBuyer's own branded card for £25 inclusive rather
> than the £60 that the SMC card will cost.

Well I just found a table with comparative technical details on a number of
cards here -
http://ibg.networkcomputing.com/ibg/Chart?guide_id=4744

So that helps a bit even though there are no actual review comments. But as
a non-techy I'm not sure how to interpret the column regarding the "Radio
Specs". I assume for output power the larger the number the better, from a
range point of view and this places the SMC card near the top of the
performance charts (with 21dbm), excluding three Proxim cards that seem by
comparison to be in another ballpark altogether (with 60 somethings) - are
those figure right?

But what should I be looking for in terms of receive sensitivity? I'm using
the larger the number, as a negative, the better - e.g. is the -80dbm
sensitivity of the Linksys WPC54G much better than the -67dbm of the
SMC2536W-AG - or is it the other way round?

Which figure is the more important one from the viewpoint of longest range
and highest speeds over distance? Is it the transmit or receive sensitivity?
Or do I need to find a card with the best balance of each?

Thanks,
Tim.

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