Wireless laptop card - what to look for?

sam_jm

Hi,

I have finally got round to getting wireless broadband, my toshiba laptop is a couple of years old, but has no built in wireless card,

Any suggestions on what to look out for - make, spec etc would be much appreciated

sam

crox

Have you bought a router yet? you can get packs that come with router and wireless cards.
Ideally you need wpa protection not wep, I'd say 54g minimum but then you might want n if you want to do more network intensive things (video playback for instance). If you decide to go for something like range boost or speed boost it'd be better to match the router with a wireless card from the same manufacturer.
Then you have to decide whether you want the cheaper (but no worse) usb dongle or a pcmia card, the difference being that a usb dongle sticks out far more and could be more fragile than pcmia. Your choice might also be affected by the usb speed of your laptop, is it 2 or 1.1?
As for manufacturers, I'd say they're much of a muchness, my Belkin usb dongle seems more than adequate.