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The ethernet port on my laptop just bit the dust. Considering its a Dell and its four years old, I'm rather surprised it lasted this long.
If anything, I have the perfect opportunity to finally get set up with wireless.
The selection at our Best Buy was rather limited so I decided to shop online and quickly found that I was completely lost on this whole wireless business. There are just so many brands and so many options that I don't even know what to single out.
What I need is a laptop wireless card and a wireless router (with atleast one or two wired ports for the desktops stationed near our modem.)
I'll be getting a Mac in December so I don't want to spend too much but I do want the most bang for my buck. I download alot of large media files and would like to play Guild Wars next week while I'm held up in bed recovering from my surgery (bye bye tonsils!) My boyfriend also has wireless at his house so I'd like to be able to use my computer there without worrying about compatibility problems.
My brother also has a newer Dell with built-in card so will I have to find out exactly what he has before I shop for a router?
As we don't live in a mansion or on a farm, distance and range isn't too important.
The guy at Best Buy was telling me alittle bit about the difference between G and N technology. Mainly, that the latter is newer and therefore we should probably hold off for awhile. But the only kit (router with card) at the store was a Belkin Pre-N package which had a great price at only $70. But a few reviews online said it wasn't "Wi-Fi certified" and may cause compatibility problems down the road. The more reliable wireless-G routers were packaged separately and more expensive. Plus there were so many brands and variations that I wasn't sure what was best for the job I wanted it to do.
As I said above though, I'm not against shopping online since its almost always cheaper than shopping at Best Buy or Circuit City. I just can't price compare until I know what I want.
So can anyone throw me some suggestions? What do the bittorrent-users and gamers of Hatrack use? And will it make me cry when I hand over my credit card?
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I'm happy with Netgear. A little trickier to set up if you don't have Windows XP or higher though. Really good phone support.
I was getting really slow bittorrent downloads until I stumbled upon port forwarding. I'm shocked it took me that long to find out about it. Now it is blazing fast.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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For strictly home use, pretty much any router will do really. Unless your house has walls that are two feet of solid concrete... But, if you don't intend to use it on the road, you can simply get the cheapest router/adapter pair you can find.
As for the adapter on your laptop, that's really up to you and where you want to use it. Generally, I'd recommend going a little higher end on the portable end because it ensures compatability no matter where you go. These days, hotspots are popping up everywhere, so with a decent card you can be sure to get online wherever you may be.
Also, as far as the laptop goes, you can find adapters that are either USB or PCMCIA. I had a small USB adapter when I had a home network, an adapter no bigger than my thumb, and it worked great for internal use. Of course, nowadays it's hard to buy a laptop that doesn't have wireless already, so so much for that idea.
If you're going to buy a Mac, you might want to check if it comes with a wireless adapter already, and then shop based on that.
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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Here's a pretty good deal on a Linksys G router and adapter for $50 with a $20 rebate. I have a Linksys and it has never given me any problems.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I use 2wire with sbc and haven't had any complaints. It's a good wireless router with usb and ethernet outputs.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:Originally posted by vonk: I use 2wire with sbc and haven't had any complaints. It's a good wireless router with usb and ethernet outputs.
Ditto, for the most part.
I was somewhat unhappy when it stopped working a few months after the warranty expired, and I ordered a new one (on customer service's advice), only to find out that the modem/router was fine. Just the power adapter (a $10-15 part) was bad.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Well, I gave up on the internet and hit the store with my dad. We ended up picking out the Netgear Super-G router and adapter (was about $120 with tax). Installation took less than half an hour and only that long because I had trouble getting my CD drive to read the installation files. So I'm joyfully typing this from my wireless laptop (though I'm still tied to the wall by my power adapter.)
And I'm looking at the port-forwarding stuff right now.
I do have another quick question though. I got the Netgear over a comparable Linksys router because it had a 108 transfer rate compared to Linksys' 54Mbps. And yet, my laptop is currently only reading 54Mbps (the desktop is also wired in.) Is this normal or can I do anything to boost that?
Posts: 1733 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Somebody explain port forwarding to me please? I got a Linksys router last month, and it was extremely slow after the first day. Slower than dial up (and I'm on cable modem). So I called Linksys tech support and they helped me fix it so that it's faster now, but still not as fast as I'd like. It's slower than when I was hard-wired. I'd love to know how to speed things up. When I'm doing file transfers I only seem to get about 58kb/sec max. I'd love to get 200 something, if that's possible. Mine's a Linksys G type.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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