Hi,

I have been doing research on wireless cards for laptops for last couple of weeks.

I am unable to run network cable to the laptop.

I just have a couple of questions that I couldnt find answers for.

1. Has anyone had success using a 54mbps wirless card for a laptop. This would be to view standard def live tv and to watch recordings from my backend machine.

2. I was wondering wheather it is better to use a 54mbps card or a 108mbps card. I have heard someone had success with a 108mb d-link gw650 (I got scamed yesterday on one on ebay, i paid for it and then the buyer got suspended from ebay). So before I try and find another one I just want to know if the 108 is overkill.

3. Does anyone out there know a wirless pcmcia card for there laptop that they are using with out lag?

My frontend system is a laptop compaq p4 2gig with a billion 7402vgp modem/router.

Any advice at all would be great as hardwiring is not an option unfortunantly.

My Dell 9300 with an intel G card "just works" in Ubuntu, although I had to go through some headache to get it to know my WPA key without prompting. The Dell has the "Centrino" badge, which I understand is pretty well supported in linux generally, but I have never personally tried in in KM. I think its there though -- worst case you'll need to do some apt-getting.

So for add-on cards, you may be OK if look for cards that are the same design as those in Centrino notebooks, maybe you can self-install the same wireless card that goes internally? Depending on how hard it is to get at the slot, installing a notebook wireless card is about the same difficulty as installing a RAM module.

I fiddled with a linksys and a Motorola PC card solution on my notebook front end for a long time before giving up. With both cards, the menus were flawless but SD playback would work for a period of time before locking up. My recollection was that the linksys card worked better but it would only last about 15 to 30 minutes in playback. As soon as it dropped out I would have to reboot the FE and the BE. Signal stregth was excellent as the router was directly downstairs from the notebook.

In the end I ran cable in the house. This was back in early 2006 so maybe the newer drivers have solved some problems

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LINHES 8.6.1 BE/FE - MSI K9N6SGM-V with AMD A64 X2 4600+, 4GB Ram. 1.5TB WD. HDHR Prime. Nvidia GT210. MCE remote.
FrontEnd - Dell Vostro 400 3.0GHz Core2Duo NVidia GeForce210. MCE Remote

I have had good luck with the levelone cards wpc-0301 and wpc-0300. The wpc-0301 seems to get better reception.. though the wpc0300 is a 108Mb card. Got them at MicoCenter..

The levelone 54Mb wpc-0301usb V3 seems to work fine as well though it I think it causing my cpu load to hover at about 2. It was only about $30.

Thanks for the advice guys. Ill give It a go I think and see how it goes. Im might try one of those wpc if I can get hold of one.