Opinions on which PCMCIA for lowest CPU utilization?

Hi,

I'm cleaning up an old laptop (a Toshiba Portege) to give away to a
friend who needs one, mainly just for web browsing. I have Windows 2000
Pro on it, and it seems to run reasonably well (ok, don't laugh ), and
I want to provide a (preferably 11g) WIFI PCMCIA card with it, just so
I know that it's all working beforehand.

So far, I've tested with an old Orinoco Silver (11B and WEP 64 bit only)
and a Dlink DWL-G650 (11B/G and WEP/WPA).

I'd prefer to include an 11G card that supports at least WPA, so I was
originally expecting to use the Dlink, but when I was testing with it, I
noticed that when it was installed, CPU utilization was stuck at 100%.

I did some research, and apparently the Dlink installer installs an app
named "Reg.exe" in startup that isn't needed, so I removed that from
startup.

After I did that, CPU utilization wasn't nailed at 100% anymore, but it
is still high... probably on the order of 80+%.

So now, I'm wondering, does anyone know of any PCMCIA card (esp. with
Win2K) that would be less of a load on the system, CPU utilization-wise.

Thanks,
Jim

 

For simple web work 98 perhaps and the Orinoco or linux as that chip
worlks well

 

Hi,

As I mentioned, I have tested an Orinoco Silver, but that's just 11b.

I was hoping that someone could recommend an 11g PCMCIA also.

Jim

 

Is it that high when nothing is happening? See what the CPU usage is like
when browsing through the wired connection [assuming it has one]. It may
just be using the browser that causes CPU spikes. Task Manager should show
which process is hammering the CPU.

 

Hi Jeff,

When it was running at/near 100%, a big chunk was SERVICES.EXE, then
Reg.exe, then Airplus.exe (this was with the Dlink DWL-G650).

If I killed Reg.exe, it went down some, but was still around 60-80%,
mostly SERVICES.EXE.

If I killed Airplus.exe, the strength icon in the Systray disappeared,
then CPU utilization went back to pretty much nothing.

From searching, I found that that Reg.exe could be killed, but as I
said, killing the Airplus.exe meant no more icon in the Systray (which
may be ok).

All of the above was with not doing anything on the machine (in answer
to alexd's post), except running Task Manager.

I have a feeling that these problems would have been resolved if I had
used WinXP and zero configuration or whatever it's called, but I think
that would have been stretching it with this laptop (233Mhz, 96MB RAM).
I think those Dlink utilities were not good ...

So, I'm still wondering: Anyone have any good experience with any 11G
PCMCIA adapters, running on Win2K?

Thanks,
Jim

 

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the suggestions.

What about the SMC SMCWCB-G? Have you (or anyone else) had any
experience (good or bad) with those wrt utilization?

Thanks,
Jim

 

Under "Secure WDS" you can add the D-Link DWL-G700AP (F/W v2.10 Thr, 30
Mar 2006) and the ASUS WL-330gE Pocket Router/AP.

 

I've used a D-Link DWL-650+ (802.11b/g) 32bit PC Card on a Thinkpad 570
(128MB RAM) running W2K SP4. The supplicant was Buffalo's Client Manager
2 (v2.1). Worked fine. Now I use a Philips SNN6500 (802.11a/b/g) 32 bit
PC Card (Atheros chipset) ant the supplicant is one from a Trendnet
TEW-504UB USB adapter. Works fine too.

You can use supplicant from different makers, this often works quite
well with W2K. You have to experiment.