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General Category => Technology and Programming => Topic started by: Mince Wobley on February 23, 2008, 06:58:38 pm

Title: USB wifi cards?
Post by: Mince Wobley on February 23, 2008, 06:58:38 pm
My sister's wireless card died and now I need to replace it, and I thought a USB wifi card would be nice because it's easier to install and etc, but are they as good as PCI cards? Do they have the same range and speed?
Title: USB wifi cards?
Post by: goat on February 23, 2008, 07:44:41 pm
They have extremely short range, but higher top speeds.
480Mbps at 3 meters and 110Mbps at 10 meters.

Though I say just get another PCI card if she won't notice the diff.
Title: USB wifi cards?
Post by: Ghost_Aspergers on February 24, 2008, 12:14:57 am
There where no change in speeds for me when I made the switch... but then again I use a repeater. BW tests still score over 2mbps, and the usual download sites are still 200-600 kbps. I replaced my pci nic with a usb one (because ran out of pci slots in my new mother board) and I haven't noticed a difference in my connection since.

How far away is your router from the pc? I could kick my repeater and test my connection (15 meters away here)
Title: USB wifi cards?
Post by: Mince Wobley on February 24, 2008, 01:26:25 am
They have extremely short range, but higher top speeds.
480Mbps at 3 meters and 110Mbps at 10 meters.

Though I say just get another PCI card if she won't notice the diff.

I'm not concerned about she noticing the difference, I'm concerned about she breaking it again


Chainer I don't have a router yet, the two PCs are operating on AD-HOC mode and there are two walls in the microwaves' path, they're made of concrete (or maybe just bricks, I don't know what this building is made of) and are about 12 cms thick

And the distance is about 6 meters or less
Title: USB wifi cards?
Post by: goat on February 24, 2008, 02:43:19 am
Average download speeds for a cable modems are only around 6-12 Mbps, so you wont notice an increase of 54 to 480 for the network card since 50 is already 10x faster than the cable modem is possible of going.
Title: USB wifi cards?
Post by: Mince Wobley on February 26, 2008, 06:30:55 pm
Nevermind, she doesn't live here anymore :(