Recommendations for a PCI card please?

erb

Can anyone suggest a good PCI card to buy to link wirelessly to the O2 wireless box? I am using Windows XP.

I have done a search on this forum but can not find anything. I have looked on the O2 site but they only do the USB Adaptors.

Sput2001

Do you know which wireless box you have?

Is it the O2 badged SpeedTouch ST780WL?

espresso

Take you pick from these here, they are all suitable. Read the user reviews.

tr3mor

You'll get a much better signal from a USB stick attached to a USB lead to move it away from the computer. Why would you want a PCI card?

Conor_3

tr3mor wrote: »

You'll get a much better signal from a USB stick attached to a USB lead to move it away from the computer. Why would you want a PCI card?

NO YOU WILL NOT GET A BETTER SIGNAL FROM A USB STICK NO MATTER WHERE YOU PUT IT.

That is because USB sticks have sod all aerial and virtually no RF amplification to speak of.

If you knew anything at all about RF transmitting and receiving, you'd never ever recommend a USB one.

Sput2001

Conor wrote: »

NO YOU WILL NOT GET A BETTER SIGNAL FROM A USB STICK NO MATTER WHERE YOU PUT IT.

That is because USB sticks have sod all aerial and virtually no RF amplification to speak of.

If you knew anything at all about RF transmitting and receiving, you'd never ever recommend a USB one.

Here we go again... :rolleyes:

Conor_3

There's no "here we go again" at all. I've done this many times for many different customers with wifi connection issues and every single time, throwing the USB one in the bin and using a PCI one has solved the problem.

Please feel free to come round my house where I can show you. My sis-in law who lives across the street uses my wifi. With a USB dongle taped to the window, she can barely receive a signal and it's intermittent. She now has a PCI card in her PC which is sat on the floor and has no trouble at all with good signal strength.

One of my customers has a workshop at the end of his garden. Trying USB, he could barely get a signal. Stick in a PCI card with an antenna on a flylead placed in the same position as the USB one and it's doing 48Mbps with a good signal.

As I said, if you had half a clue about RF transmitting and receiving, you'd not question the fact.

DatabaseError

I have used both, now ALL my machines have cards, except the one using cat5e, USB wasn't worth the bother.
The only people I know who benefit from USB are my parents, on a campsite in Spain they loop a usb dongle over a tree (long usb extension lead) in order to get a signal for their lappy

erb

NickMidgley wrote: »

Do you know which wireless box you have?

Is it the O2 badged SpeedTouch ST780WL?

Yes I think it is this one. The white box and I got it in June this year.

Don't Thompson do one? I was told you usually get the best results using the same manufacturers equipment.

Sput2001

Conor wrote: »

There's no "here we go again" at all. I've done this many times for many different customers with wifi connection issues and every single time, throwing the USB one in the bin and using a PCI one has solved the problem.

Please feel free to come round my house where I can show you. My sis-in law who lives across the street uses my wifi. With a USB dongle taped to the window, she can barely receive a signal and it's intermittent. She now has a PCI card in her PC which is sat on the floor and has no trouble at all with good signal strength.

One of my customers has a workshop at the end of his garden. Trying USB, he could barely get a signal. Stick in a PCI card with an antenna on a flylead placed in the same position as the USB one and it's doing 48Mbps with a good signal.

As I said, if you had half a clue about RF transmitting and receiving, you'd not question the fact.

OK, like I've said previously, I look after four wireless networks and only one of them includes a PC with a PCI adaptor. The rest either use USB adaptors (about seven off the top of my head) or are laptops with cards built in.

You're right, I don't really know about the finer points of RF transmission, but I do know when a wireless connection is strong and reliable, and I've never had any trouble from any of the USB adaptors. The PCI adaptor, on the other hand, needed to have an antenna extension added to it to get a reliable signal, and now it works as well as the USB ones.

Sput2001

erb wrote: »

Yes I think it is this one. The white box and I got it in June this year.

OK, then it's a pretty standard wireless B/G router. Any of the ones in espresso's link (post 3) should work fine. Novatech do a decent range, too.