Miscellaneous Forum

Has anyone installed a WiFi adapter for a desktop computer? If so, have you tried both the PCI card and USB dongles? If so, any difference in quality?

Robert

When we redid the floors in the house a couple of years ago, we had to relocate all the PCs to the front room. Since I did not want to rewire the house, I had everybody on wireless for a short time (since WEP encryption is easily broken, as my brother the supercomputer geek tells me, I didn't want to stay this way long).

We used the USB dongle for laptops and a wireless receiving station along with with a switch for the desktops (i.e., still connecting them with cat5e cable to the switch, which was connected to the wireless receiver). I didn't even know that PCI cards were an option, but I wouldn't have been crazy about them since I would have had to open all the cases to install them.

Both the USB receivers and the wireless receiver worked fine, although the wireless receiver seemed to do a better job. However, since I have a TV retransmitter in the house on the same wavelength as the wireless network, this was not a level playing field, depends on where a given PC was...

So how's that for a non-answer? :-)

Bill

Bill, at least it confirms for me that the USB dongles work fine. I can't see that it would make any difference plugging them into a laptop or a desktop.

Thank you,

Robert

I used 5 usb dongles on 5 desktop computers and 1 wirless router modem and had no problem. I had to use a usb extension though on the desktops farthest from the the wifi router to get a better reception. Never considered the pci card becasue of lack of pci slot. But wired networks work better and faster than the wifi.

bong

If your desktop has USB 2.0 ports then I say go with the WIFI USB dongle route; should not see a significant difference compared to WIFI PCI card.

If your desktop has the older USD 1.1 ports then it would probably be better to go the PCI card route since there will be a significant speed bottleneck difference.

With regards to port speed in general, the PCI card is faster than the current implementations of USB.