Before writing this post, maybe I thought as same as others, or the most people. But now my thought was changed totally due to my experience. It might be the result of the product I chose only. I didn't have a chance to test with another model so far though.
The thing is I have to find a solution to make a computer, pretty old one with Celeron 500MHz, 128MB RAM PC100, BX Chipset (Ohhh, legendary chipset about 10 years ago!!) You know finding the wifi card that supports Win98se is pretty hard and it's even hard to find all of drivers for another device. Because so far we have Windows XP which's so smart and automatically finds most of driver. Maybe new technoguy does even know how hard, how long it takes to find and install those devices. First I tried to setup Win98SE and WinME; however, they didn't seem work properly due to incomplete windows setup set I had or whatever I have no idea too. (After I left my home, I didn't have any kind of things to fix a computer.) Then I decided to install windows XP which it's too heavy for this computer for sure but it worked even it had a slow process.
Ok, get it to our topic. I bought NETGEAR WG311 v3 at RadioShack $39.99 (after $20 inst. rebate) I thought It's expensive enough to be good but I was so wrong.
from my little research: suggestions are the same way >> Go for PCI!!
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/PCI-USB-Wifi-ftopict174476.html
http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/USB-card-PCI-card-ftopict117577.html
As far as my knowledge, I'm pretty sure that PCI device is much better than USB device in several reasons, such as CPU Load, Bandwidth, BUS, Power. This time I faced a total different story from what I knew before.
NETGEAR WG311 works properly but it saw only 1 hotspot which is 1 foot far from it.
My laptop, fujitsu S2110, found 5 hotspots around my room. (Surprise, huh?)
my zodiac with SanDisk 256 MB SD+Wifi found 2 hotspots.
The last thing is nobrand USB Wifi, tested on the same PC as NETGEAR WG311, found 3 hotspots..
The result of Netgear NIC didn't change at all when I changed a stock antenna to a new one which has 4.5dBi gain which's better than stock about 2.2dBi gain. I think I try enough with this NIC. I'd better return this *disappointed* product and find a new USB Wifi which it's better for sure...
In brief I can't say that USB Wifi is better than PCI Wifi, but one thing I'm pretty sure of is DON'T GO FOR *NETGEAR WG311 v3* and if you choose USB Wifi, you have more chance of success. 555
At least I'm not alone: Comment in newegg.com
#1
Cons: bad xp SP2 compatibility. not sure if it is my AMD chip or SP2 because even the XP update from netgear woulnt help. BSOD's daily needed a restore to get them to stop. buy a linksys, havent had a single problem with them.
#2
Cons: This thing is piece of junk. It just sits there forever and scans for networks, and if it ever connects, it drops the signal within a few seconds. Buy a Lxxxxys instead of this garbage.
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