The second review of Orinoco wireless kit. I am yet again impressed by another of their products, this time I had a look at one of their best selling products, their pcmcia wireless card. It comes in two flavours, a silver version and a gold. They sent me one of their silver ones to look at. The card fits into any Type II slot on your laptop or can be put into a desktop pc via available PCI or ISA adaptors. It is also supported by a range of operating sytems: Windows NT 3.5 or later, Windows 95/98/2000/XP, Apple MacOS 8.0 or later, Novell Netware 3.x and 4.x and *nix.
Card in all it's glory..
The card is interconnectable with other brands of products complying to the 802.11b standard. It connected to the two access points I tested it with fine and gave good range/speed throughout my house. Quoted maximum range for the card is up to 550 metres in optimal conditions. The card can be used either in AdHoc mode, to connect to another wireless client running the same mode, or to a wireless access point. Another few good features about the card are that it is one of the few supported by Netstumbler (link to www.netstumbler.com). It also has the feature of being able to connect to an external aerial to boost the range of that wireless signal with your home-made pringles can wifi aerial or whatever! The card also supports 64-bit wifi encryption to help make things a bit more secure over your wireless link.
Connector on the side of the card for aerial.
Installation of the card was easy, I just stuck it in the slot and it was detected immediately. Windows XP searched to see what type of card it was and recognised it as an Orinoco wireless card. I then selected the wireless network to connect to and IP settings and I was away!
I tried the card also in a PCI and ISA slot using the adaptors that Orinoco can provide as an extra. I found these very straight forward to install and were detected and installed by windows automatically.
Wireless card neatly plugged into the PCI adaptor.
In conclusion, I'd say the Orinoco card is one of the best if not the best wireless cards I've used. It's well built, fully 802.11b compatible, works with nearly every OS ,has good range and speed and a ton of features.
Pros:
Compatible with a range of operating systems
Good range and speed
External aerial connector
Cons:
None spring to mind, a truely excellent product!
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