I'm considering buying a wireless router/AP and PCMCIA notebook adapter as
holiday gifts for friends. This will be used for nothing more complicated
than wirelessly sharing a DSL (3.0 mbps down/384 kbps up) connection to a
Toshiba laptop from a Dell desktop machine within the confines of an
average-sized house and small backyard (patio). The laptop is running XP
Home and the desktop is running XP Pro. I think I've narrowed my choices
down to the Netgear WGR614 with the Netgear WG511 card or the Linksys WRT54G
with the Linksys WPC54G card. From what I've researched it seems that the
Netgear has better range but Netgear seems to be lagging a bit on
implementing WPA support, which I feel is a very important feature. It
looks to me like the Linksys is easier to setup and administer, has full WPA
support, but the range of the router/AP is shorter than the Netgear. I have
a pretty good idea of what I'm doing as far as setup and administration of a
small LAN like this, but the friends I'm getting this for do not and will be
flustered if the setup is not robust (connections dropped, etc.) so that's a
factor too (otherwise I will be spending lots of time there fixing it).
Which one of these would be the better choice (or other brand at about the
same price points)?
Thanks!
Tmax60
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