Belkin Wireless "dongles" now £13.99 @ PC World

TDIfurby

Just noticed a £1 drop in price after I'd just gone and bought TWO at £14.99 so my two PCs could talk to my freshly installed Wanadoo Livebox downstairs. NO MORE CABLES! yippee! :j :j :j This is a Belkin 54 MBPS USB dongle.

Belkin F5D7050UK Wireless USB Adapter

Wirelessly connects Desktops & Laptops

Compatible with USB 1.1 & 2.0

3x Wireless Range of 802.11a Adapters

Advanced, low-power consumption chipset

Keep Your Notebook Battery Life Longer

64 & 128bit WEP Encryption

Offers backward-compatibility with 11b

Belkin Lifetime Warranty



Anyway - new housemate needs one so I offered to get one for her (what a gent ) and noticed that they'd dropped to £13.99, RRP in store £19.99. You need to add it to basket, then use the collect at store option if you don't want to pay delivery - I always prefer to pay for it at a till anyway and my local PC World is slap bang on my commute home.

Here's a link to it on the PC World website:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0093693227.1141077522@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccgdaddhdlgjhdicflgceggdhhmdgmh.0&page=Product&fm=11&sm=1&tm=2&sku=369188&category_oid=-24990

If the link doesn't work, just plumb in 369188 in the search and it will take you straight to it. Excellent value for money in my opinion considering that the oem Wanadoo dongles are going for on Ebay. :eek: :mad:

mercurystar999

So is this cheap for a wireless adaptor?

Totoriko

Isn't WEP less secure?

kevinyork

mercurystar999 wrote:

So is this cheap for a wireless adaptor?

Not a bad price but Amazon also have it for the same price but their delivery is only free over £15.

Kev

TDIfurby

Yep - Best way - Get an adaptor, find a wanadoo wireless network on your street. Get yourself invited to dinner, sneak a shufty under the livebox to get the WEP key, then pinch their net connection.

£13.99 isn't a "RUN OUT AND GET ONE!" bargain, but as USB wireless adaptors go, I believe its very good value for money. I have two working well now keeping my main PC and the folding AMD-64 hooked up.

redfox

I'm going to move this over to Shop but don't drop if it's not a Quick! Grabbit then

mantisgeek

Downside is that the Belkin doesn't support WPA encryption which is less secure. Recent PC-Pro magazine has an article stating a knowledgeable hacker can get into a WEP encrypted network within a few hours - then they can have access to your PC if it's shared.

I recently bought a TP-Link USB wireless network dongle for £15 on ebay (inc. of P&P). A bargain considering it supports WPA encryption and picks up a signal well even after two cavity brick walls!

TDIfurby

redfox wrote:

I'm going to move this over to Shop but don't drop if it's not a Quick! Grabbit then

I didn't know that existed... What you get for just having links in your favourites. :A Good move though.

SPembo

never trust buying computer equipment from a screw driver manufacturer, you'll always end up getting screwed over. Belkin do tend to be nice and cheap, but can often be troublesome.

andrewpmoore

I bought one of these last week. It's fairly easy to get working with Belkins own wireless utility but if you want to use windows zero configuration I found I had to do an extra step to what was said in the instructions, and that was to disable the belkin utility in the systems services, otherwise it would override the windows config on every reboot.

Seems to have a good range though, so I'm pleased with it.

mercurystar999

I've got a linksys wireless router. I have it encrypted by wpa so wheres the cheapest one that supports that?