Lucent/Orinoco Gold is my favorite Wi-Fi card ever!
Ok, so it's an ancient 5V/16-bit card, but it's the only card that has installed on my 98 laptop on the first try and worked perfectly, using the drivers I found here from Driverguide.com (*). Sure, it only supports 64-bit WEP encryption, at least under 98 (128-bit WEP, which isn't much better, under 2K/XP), using the drivers I found, but it works!
My Linksys WPC11 ver.3 Instant Wireless Network PC Card works, but by contrast is a pain to install (you need to install the drivers before the card, or it won't work), has an exceedingly flaky and cumbersome Wi-Fi control panel / interface (even under 2000 and XP - I marvel that anybody, including myself, buys their crap), and has an annoying tendency to crash the machine if you try to hotplug the wireless card, at least under 98. I won't even go into how the installation broke under 98 after just one month. I think it works better under 2000.
And last of all, the horrible, horrible D-Link DWL-650+ I have. I'm not sure this thing is even electrically operational. The light lights up and the machine detects it, but the utility that's included with the D-Link drivers never detects the card, can never communicate (probably for the afore-mentioned reason), and appears to have been programmed in QuickBasic or something, judging from the way it works (or doesn't work). When I tried to install it this time around, it just locked the computer up every time, and yes, I installed the drivers first, before inserting the card. Friends of mine have had similar experiences with D-Link Wi-Fi cards.
*-I would make a German-speaker proud (assuming they aren't a grammar police-type); "Throw the horse over the fence a bale of hay". Isn't "using the drivers I found here from...etc." kind of odd? But hey, I have excellent reading comprehension :)
Also note that you must be signed in to Driverguide.com to download the driver. I suggest signing in and then visiting the driver URL again.
Edit 9/24/05 3:30PM:
I find that WEP encryption is exceedingly weak - 64-bit is crackable in about 1-10 minutes, and 128-bit can be cracked in an hour and a half, tops. I'm going to have to discontinue using wireless until I can get at least WPA encryption (along with at least a 20-character password, to ensure cypher strength), because using WEP exposes my wired network to the possibility of attack.
If only my Linksys AP allowed me to block off the wireless portion of the network to all but Internet gateway access. I can segregate it on a separate network if I use one of my computers as the gateway, but one of the reasons I'm using the Linksys AP is that the Internet access doesn't go down if the computer goes down.
My Linksys WPC11 ver.3 Instant Wireless Network PC Card works, but by contrast is a pain to install (you need to install the drivers before the card, or it won't work), has an exceedingly flaky and cumbersome Wi-Fi control panel / interface (even under 2000 and XP - I marvel that anybody, including myself, buys their crap), and has an annoying tendency to crash the machine if you try to hotplug the wireless card, at least under 98. I won't even go into how the installation broke under 98 after just one month. I think it works better under 2000.
And last of all, the horrible, horrible D-Link DWL-650+ I have. I'm not sure this thing is even electrically operational. The light lights up and the machine detects it, but the utility that's included with the D-Link drivers never detects the card, can never communicate (probably for the afore-mentioned reason), and appears to have been programmed in QuickBasic or something, judging from the way it works (or doesn't work). When I tried to install it this time around, it just locked the computer up every time, and yes, I installed the drivers first, before inserting the card. Friends of mine have had similar experiences with D-Link Wi-Fi cards.
*-I would make a German-speaker proud (assuming they aren't a grammar police-type); "Throw the horse over the fence a bale of hay". Isn't "using the drivers I found here from...etc." kind of odd? But hey, I have excellent reading comprehension :)
Also note that you must be signed in to Driverguide.com to download the driver. I suggest signing in and then visiting the driver URL again.
Edit 9/24/05 3:30PM:
I find that WEP encryption is exceedingly weak - 64-bit is crackable in about 1-10 minutes, and 128-bit can be cracked in an hour and a half, tops. I'm going to have to discontinue using wireless until I can get at least WPA encryption (along with at least a 20-character password, to ensure cypher strength), because using WEP exposes my wired network to the possibility of attack.
If only my Linksys AP allowed me to block off the wireless portion of the network to all but Internet gateway access. I can segregate it on a separate network if I use one of my computers as the gateway, but one of the reasons I'm using the Linksys AP is that the Internet access doesn't go down if the computer goes down.
posted by Wireball at 12:15 AM
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