Advice on wireless network card please?

Freebyman

Hi, my grandson wants to connect his PC (about 5 years old, but running Windows 7) to his mothers wireless network but is unable to do so. He was told he needs a wireless network card, the problem is I have no idea about home networks and cannot help him, whats the cheapest option possible please?

Im sure I can fit it if I just knew what to buy, further to this he also wants one for his xbox 360 as well, but he can wait for that as I believe they are around £40!!!

Can anyone advise and help?

asbokid

Your grandson could either get a USB wifi dongle for his PC, or an internal PCI wifi card.

There are several standards for wireless. The 802.11g standard is pretty much the base standard now. It theoretically offers 54Mbps.

The cost of an 802.11g wifi card, and a USB 802.11g wifi dongle, both start at about £5.

A certain amount of skill or experience is needed to install an internal card. This involves opening the PC case where there is a very small risk of electric shock and a greater risk of damaging other components.

The USB wireless dongle should be plug and play.

* A lot of those cards listed on ebay are for laptops rather than desktop machines. This is what an internal PCI wifi card looks like for a desktop PC.

Freebyman

Thanks for your quick reply asbokid (great name), I was going to open up the case etc, but to be honest the dongle option will suit everyone better as I am not sure if there is a spare PCI slot in there.

Just one question regarding the dongle, do you need an aerial extender for this, the only reason I ask is that I previously had mobile broadband and the reception was terrible. I presume a wireless network is totally different to this?

asbokid

Freebyman wrote: »

Thanks for your quick reply asbokid (great name), I was going to open up the case etc, but to be honest the dongle option will suit everyone better as I am not sure if there is a spare PCI slot in there.

Just one question regarding the dongle, do you need an aerial extender for this, the only reason I ask is that I previously had mobile broadband and the reception was terrible. I presume a wireless network is totally different to this?

I guess the need for an external antenna depends on the range you expect. 802.11 wireless is a bit disappointing. Lost connections are commonplace and the throughput is nowhere near the possible maximum. Achieving 10Mbps on a 802.11g seems good. Although maximum wireless speed is probably not that important since the bottleneck for most home networks will be the connection to the outside world.

802.11 is a better technical standard than 3G (UMTS) mobile broadband. 802.11 uses OFDMA which offers much higher spectral efficiency, whereas UMTS is saddled with the dated CDMA scheme, using a substandard proprietary implementation from Broadcom, who [strike]bribed[/strike] lobbied governments to encourage adoption of their hardware for the emerging 3G standard.

kwikbreaks

An add on antenna for a USB dongle can be expensive and lots of the dongles have no antenna connector anyway. The simplest solution if you get problems (likely with a dongle shoved in a port on the computer which is under a desk) is to simply use a USB extension lead and try to position the dongle in the clear.

If you want to get geeky with it you can construct a cardboard and tinfoil reflector which will give more gain than most add-on antennas anyway. I think there is a Blur Peter badge up for grabs for the weirdest.
http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template2/index.html

Hammyman

I paid £8 for the last PCI wifi card I bought from a shop.