What Wi-Fi Card for my laptop?

After scanning postings on this group for a few days, I'm still
confused about "IEEE standards" and "bits."

I have an eighteen-month-old FuJitsu C-7651 Lifebook with Windows
XP(Home) and a PCMCIA listing under Device Manager that says: "Texas
Instruments PCI-1520 Card Bus Controller."

I have a wired network at home but want to buy a Wi-fi card to use
when I travel (to take advantage of any available wireless internet
connections.) I went online with the intent to order an 802.11g/b
PCMCIA card but got confused by the 32-bit designation on some of the
(apparently) PMCIA cards. Will a 32-bit card work on my computer? If
not, what should I buy that would be compatible with the Lifebook as
well as both the "g" and "b" standards?

Many thanks,
Joe

The 'b' spec wifi is much faster then any internet connection you are likely
to encounter,
there is no point paying more for 'g', unless you are likely to need faster
connection to some LAN.
Regards,
Martin

I have the same chipset in my Sager and the Linksys 802.11b card and it
didn't work with my chipset.
I've got a Dell Truemobile, which is Agere Orinoco Gold card just with a
different sticker. There's a 'hack'
to use the Orinoco firmware and client manager (basically hex edit to
recognize Dell). It work great it was
$47.60 with s/h directly from Dell and it's got an internal intenna and an
external antenna connector if you choose to get an external antenna or do
some 'driving'. The card works great.
The PCI-1520 is 32 bit slot. Way back when around 1995 I think there was
some flip-flopping on the cardbus
standard and there were a few 16bit models. All carbus now are 32bit. so
you shouldn't have to worry about that
everything is standardized now.

Before buying a card try and call their tech support to find out if the
card is compatible with your chipset.
Then you don't end up tearing you hair out when the Linksys card you just
bought kinda works and spend an hour
on the phone with tech support only to find its not 100% compatible with
your chipset.

On 5 Aug 2003 09:29:20 -0700, Joseph Carrier <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

> After scanning postings on this group for a few days, I'm still
> confused about "IEEE standards" and "bits."
>
> I have an eighteen-month-old FuJitsu C-7651 Lifebook with Windows
> XP(Home) and a PCMCIA listing under Device Manager that says: "Texas
> Instruments PCI-1520 Card Bus Controller."
>
> I have a wired network at home but want to buy a Wi-fi card to use
> when I travel (to take advantage of any available wireless internet
> connections.) I went online with the intent to order an 802.11g/b
> PCMCIA card but got confused by the 32-bit designation on some of the
> (apparently) PMCIA cards. Will a 32-bit card work on my computer? If
> not, what should I buy that would be compatible with the Lifebook as
> well as both the "g" and "b" standards?
>
> Many thanks,
> Joe
>

> The 'b' spec wifi is much faster then any internet connection you are likely
> to encounter,

You reckon?

See Primetime

http://www.bulldogdsl.com/residential/index.asp

Or this one

http://www.easynet.net/broadband/bro...ent.asp?id=561

802.11b will struggle on these without a shadow of a doubt. A WAP11 is
lucky to do 450kbytes/sec and turn on WEP and that drops quite
significantly from my experience.

David.

I did say 'likely' to encounter.
Most people who just surf the net and send / receive email won't benefit
from 2Mbs connection.
Unless your are downloading gigabytes of MP3's, there is no point paying
extra for that and by extension 11g.
Regards,
Martin
Noting that Easynet don't even quote a price for the 8Mbs service...

Many thanks to everyone who responded to my posting.

I've now learned that my "PCMCIA" slots are actually 32-bit, "Card
Bus" slots, so I have no need to worry about the 32-bit question any
more -- I think :-).

I will go for a 'g' card because I may switch my home network to
wireless at some point in the next few months.

Primarily because I've used NetGear networking stuff successfully in
the past, I may go for their WG511 card -- unless I should read
cautionary notes about that particular card on this forum.

"Martin²" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message news:<7QYXa.54460$(E-Mail Removed)>.. .
> The 'b' spec wifi is much faster then any internet connection you are likely
> to encounter,
> there is no point paying more for 'g', unless you are likely to need faster
> connection to some LAN.
> Regards,
> Martin