USB Network Adapter?

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benwa02

macrumors 6502

Original poster

• Apr 5, 2005

• #1

I need to get a wireless network card for my PC and I am looking for the cheap way out. I have seen these for as low as 9.99 but this was the first one I found to show.

Has anyone used one of these before? Do they work good? Distance from the base?

Thanks.

 

Sedulous

macrumors 68030

• Apr 5, 2005

• #2

I don't know about PCs, but the USB adapter (Belkin, I think) I got for one of my G4s was terrible. The software was glitchy and weird. Worse yet, it would routinely cause the system to crash hard. Again, that experience was on a Mac.

Still, USB interfaces use the CPU. For small peripherals that is fine, but I wouldn't bog my computer down with stuff like a network adapter if I didn't have to.

 

strider42

macrumors 65816

• Apr 5, 2005

• #3

I'd say for a PC, it would be fine. But if you might want to use it with a mac, an ethernet based adaptor is much better (and more expensive) as theya re OS independent and require no drivers. USB adaptors have very poor to non existent mac support.

My roommate uses a similar looking USB adaptor on her PC adaptor and it seems to work just fine.

 

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benwa02

macrumors 6502

Original poster

• Apr 5, 2005

• #4

I guess I will just go with a cheap PCI card for the PC. Do you think a cheap one wouldnt get good distance? I need this to reach from one level down and on the other side of the house.

 

redeye be

macrumors 65816

• Apr 6, 2005

• #5

benwa02 said:

I guess I will just go with a cheap PCI card for the PC. Do you think a cheap one wouldnt get good distance? I need this to reach from one level down and on the other side of the house.

Click to expand...

If it doesn't work you can always try one of these:

http://me.jeremiahwhite.com/pringles.html

http://www.turnpoint.net/wireless/cantennahowto.html

http://www.netscum.com/~clapp/wireless.html

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448

Do make sure you can attach an external antenna to the card.