3.
May 22, 2007 5:45 AM
in response to:
rivva
In my opinion cetirus paribus, I would take the USB adapter.
This is because the USB adapter is very versatile. If you need to give a wireless connection to another computer temporarily, you can simply plug it there. Furthermore, the range of the adapter is larger as it can be simply manipulated to a particular orientation to obtain the optimum signal strength. And there is the convenience of not needing to open up your computer.
However, there are pitfalls too. USB adapters consume additional processing cycles on your CPU although this is negligibly small. Another issue is that it has a higher rate of incompatibility problems. Some motherboard chipsets strangely have difficulties working with USB wireless adapters, leading to hours of useless troubleshooting.
PCI cards are generally more stable as they utilise the system bus to transfer data directly. USB adapters have to go through an additional layer in order to transfer the data.
The overall performance should be the same. Though the USB 2.0 standard is faster that 54MBps of 802.11g, this speed may be affected by other USB devices. For the PCI adapter, since it is connected to the 133MB/s PCI bus, the throughput of the card is more stable.
If you want maximum stability and compatibility, go for the PCI adapter. If you want convenience at the expense of a slight potential incompatibility, use the USB adapter.
3.06GHZ 524 HT EM64T 533 MHz,
1024 MB RAM PC4200 DDR2,
160GB 7200RPM HDD,
Nvidia Geforce 6200SE TC 256MB,
Sound Blaster Live! 5.1,
Logitech G15 keyboard,
Razer Diamondback mouse,
Windows XP Home SP2,
OpenSuse 10.2
