Re: "Painless" wireless card for laptop

From: Joe Pfeiffer (pfeiffer_at_cs.nmsu.edu)
Date: 07/12/04 

Date: 12 Jul 2004 14:34:11 -0600

whitteng@con2inc.com (Gary Whitten) writes:

> What is the most "painless" wireless card for a Linux laptop
> these days? By painless, I mean
> 1) Linux friendly - easy instalation
> (not having to compile or even install a new driver would be nice)
> 2) available everywhere (Best Buy, CompUSA...)
> 3) works at hot spots - my Belkin works at home, but nowhere else
> 4) not overly expensive

Unfortunately, you sort of have to go by chipset, not
name-on-the-box. The "Orinoco" chipset is probably the best supported
right now.

The good news is, it's so common that if you buy a wireless card at
random there's a good chance you just got the right one. I'll comment
that it's overly expensive ($100 range, IIRC), but the Sony PCMCIA
wireless network card works quite well, and has an antenna that
doesn't hang a long ways out the side of my laptop.

I have no idea what could cause your problem with (3) -- if you've got
802.11b, the card should work anywhere there is an access point. 

-- 
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D.       Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science       FAX   -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University          http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
Southwestern NM Regional Science and Engr Fair:  http://www.nmsu.edu/~scifair

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