We are all SMC/g in my house. $10.00 a piece after rebates.

Bad Netgear experience here. Added a PCI card to my son's brand new Athlon based HP-paq box. Apparently Netgear's PCI adapter doesn't like via chipsets (which most of the Athlon based products use). Netgear has known about (but not acknowledged) this problem since last July. Lots of threads on different sites where people are trying to fix the issue with workarounds.

We had intermittent locks ups, all kinds of issues. Switched out to a US Robotics card and all is good.

I hate companies that don't stand behind their products.

second that!
 

I can second that Orinoco cards are one of the best, or THE best. They work out of the box with most devices, and compared to 3com, linksys (I would stay away from linksys) netgear, others, orinico give the best throughput and connectivity.

Similar to the cisco, they are more expensive and really never go on sale, but they are only about 69$ these days.

If tou will be using the PC to work extensively with LAN servers and oher clients, 802.11g is faster.

But since most Internet throughput maxes out at 1.5Mb/sec, 802.11b is still 7.3 times faster than the bottleneck!

I own 2 cards: Netgear 802.11b ($10 after rebates) and Linksys 802.11b (~US$29).

Although my business partner and I prefer working with Linksys (our "preferred LAN equipment"), the Netgear card has performed well! And it extends out about half the amount that the Linksys card does, so it may get injured less.

Do NOT buy 802.11a. It is an oddball in the wifi world. And the distance is good for only the same room!

I've had good luck with free to $10 cards - a b card about a year and half ago from PC Club ($50 w/ a $50 rebate), and have now upgraded to a Belkin g card for $10 after $40 worth of rebates at Staples.

b is fine for throughput if you are just surfing at NRT, but g has better range (or so I've been told) which is nice when the signal strength is poor (as it so often is).

But B and G use the exact same RF.

I think that the range is the same.

It does? :confused:

although
 

well, the G cards do do better. For whatever reason, they get better range. Could be a better standard