WiFi card: PCI vs USB -- who win?

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.

Beware of deliberate mistake!

Stay alert if you would like to stay in the US, ha ha it's not about terrorism but something that's closer than that; please check a transaction or bill in every single line. Because they, any company, will overcharge you in every way they can. Even though it's a stupid way. Last few days, I got 2 stupid electronic mistakes (they claimed). Firstly, it's from CitiBank. They charged me $30 for insufficient fund in my new account (I just opened it few weeks ago and never used it before) Second, it's Sprint mistake again (I hope it's the last one) They rejected my $100 rebate with a reason that is "We apologize for the misunderstanding, but your rebate is invalid because the product was not purchased within the dates specified by this promotion". How stupid they are? They gave me a rebate form. All I did is just filled out the application and sent to Sprint.

All this stupid things is solved by calling and making a quarrel for a while. Ohh, am I wrong if I think they make a deliberate mistake for people who don't care in every single detail? I don't know for sure; however, it seems to be that way. Becareful of your bill!!!

I don't like New York

I don't like New York

After a week living in New York. Someone dub it *land of freedom*. It's true indeed but too much, in my thinking. New York is such a city that incredibly amalgamates every races well, I mean it's not only stay together but live together. Many couples are black and white, some are yellow and white, so new generation seems to be brown mostly.

It did pretty good about racial harmony but not how good they live a life. Another side of huge city always has something're really worse. NY has too much based-level people, I mean worker, blue-collar or whatever you call. To be huge city, NY needs a lot of blue-collar to fulfil work that upper level afraid to do. According to my idea, social structure always be like triangle, higher it is, it needs wider base to stablilize. Such a big city like NY, its peak is too high, meanwhile base is too low as well. This is the problem that it can't avoid and seems that it won't care about this. Subway envirom ment, for example, is very very bad, including dirt, certainty and so on. How old is the trains? I can't answer this but all I know is they need improvment, a lot of improvement and subway station must be improve either. why I have to mention subway? because subway is a main transportation for most based level people here. If you can't improve how they live a life, don't try to improve others, it's always suck that this gruop of people always be treated bad, whether they have the hardest work and the least revenue.

Next problem is a basic problem, that is, manhattan is only one place that's civilization. Everything is in mahattan. If you can blink your eyes to see manhattan and queens or brooklyn in a row. you will think like me, "is that the same state?" "Am I stay in New York? (when you see others but manhattan)" It's not what we saw in a movie. Even where peter parker live, I think he live in nearby manhattan city. It looks better that real town that I saw. And if you have a chance to see rental room of foreigner in queens. Ohhh! its environment's sort of place to sleep only, in such an environment like that no one can think of a thing creatively. $400 room here you can find neither small room size like 2*3 sq. meters nor big but dirt and all without furnished and share-bathroom. On the contrary in other states, with this price, you can get a comfortable furnished room with your own bathroom for sure.

I don't mention to mahattan at all because it's much expensive to compare with where I used to live. If you stay in manhattan, maybe you can used the same amount of money that pay for room 1 month to live in Bangkok for 4 months, including good room and food for living. I have no idea how new yorker can live their life like this. As soon as I have a chance to go other place I'll leave. But now my life must go on stucking in Gotham-like city for a while. Wait and see maybe I will find some good sides in a place like this. I hope.

The Lake House (2006) from WB

From TV ad again, Surprisely, The Lake House is the new movie that will release June 16, 2006. Oh! very soon!! I can't wait to watch now. Anyway, at first, I don't know what this movie is either; however, the ad showed enough informations for me to realize that is mimic of il mare, one of my favorite, I means that il mare is very emotional romantic movie and sure, it's all about love.

It's pretty exciting to wait to watch old brand new movie esp, the one you really liked. Honestly, I don't expect The Lake House would be better than il mare, I don't think american could make romantic movie as good as asian do. Eventhough I'm asian, but il mare is korean, so I don't get that like a native so. I think it's fair enough for me to compare both of them. Will see how much Keenu Reeves and Sandra Bullock spell the scroll of love through the mail box.

Whether you get about love or not, what I'm pretty sure of is you will charm with fully romance through the film named "il Mare". Don't miss!

take back to the fully emotional film for a while..






ps. Anyway, one thing that I'm not to feel good about this is I can not watch this movie with the one I want to.

New MSN 8 beta

Windows Live Messenger or MSN version 8.0 released for a while. Someone said it's pretty cool interface, someone said it's so suck, darned slow.

Anyway, I won't talk about that. Because today, I received the alert from MSN to update a new BETA version. I have no choice, it's not gonna worse than this one. that's all I know. It took pretty long to finish downloading and installing progression, comparing w/G-Talk. (absolute difference, right?)

After completed all procedures, Main program is look so guady, flashy to me. I don't know why microsoft want to make it look like this. I prefered the way G-talk did, just simple, fast, adequate. Maybe I'm a minority.

One thing that I found it's more pragmatic, that is, merge a consecutive conversion together like most of chat-clients. It uses space more efficient than they did before. I hope microsoft might have started to change their perspective. That'll be the best news, if it's real.

Using Treo as palm plus phone or just a sophisticated phone and decoration

Yesterday, I went to Atlanta airport to pick someone. The interesting things in an airport is there are many treo users and risible story about how they used treo.

First, a guy with a treo on his belt. When I first saw him, treo still opened, keyboard light on and palm original headset is connected in his ear. I'm not sure what program was opening. Anyway, when he wanna make a phone call, he pick another phone in his pant pocket, that is, surprisely Nokia 5130 body-like, I'm not sure but it's grayscale screen, and make a phone call! -_-! What about treo he has? Unfortunately, it seem like his call has a problem, so he pick a treo and open phone program and use via touch screen only!! And make a phone call with an old phone again! What?!?

According to my own opinion, treo has a significant advantage in one-hand operation but, as you can see, he didn't even use that! Otherwise, I imply that he didn't have any 3rd party program in order not to turn keyboard light off in that circumstance, enough lumen to see anything clearly.

One question is "Is Treo not easy or comfortable enough for everyone to make a call as Nokia 5130?"

Second, pretty women's time. It's not ridiculous as the first one but it showed the same idea of how they used treo in a uncomfortable way. I think her age should be around 40. She always held treo w/leather case in her hand. When she used, first she did is picked up stylus, after that she tried to stare at treo screen, like a people who has not very well vision, and tap and tap on screen for a while, then she acts as calling someone. :-D that's all, she just tried to make a phone call! OH! What a one-hand operation? NO! None of them used that feature. Why? It should be a good question.

It's just a funny story while waiting for an arrival of my friends.