Advantages: Simple setup, manages itself Disadvantages: Very occasional low signal
...Following on from my review of the Belkin wireless router, this is the piece of kit at the other end of the link. The PCI Desktop Card is whats required to allow the PC to communicate with the router.
This product cost me £25 when I bought it. I was interested in the Belkin wireless router, so I played safe and used the same manufacturer for both items that would allow the router and my PC talk to each other.
--Whats in the box--
On opening the box, there were no real surprises. There was the PCI card, the antenna, a quick installation guide and a CD which contained the drivers and a full manual.
--Installation--
On reading the quick installation guide, it was apparent that the software had to be installed before the card was plugged in. The reason for this was because, when the hardware was detected, the software would...
Advantages: AGP Support - Will run most modern games - reasonable price Disadvantages: Now quite outdated - If you have AGP, you might be better getting a new computer
...I have a fairly elderly computer, a Pentium 4 2.8GHz, which is now getting on a bit, but since I don't use it for games much, I've never particularly worried about having the latest and fastest computer that will play games at their top settings, just that it will play them reasonably, and upgrades usually come when a new game comes out that I want to be able to play, and I either can't with my system as it is full stop, or it looks or runs too awful to be playable.
My last experience of this was when The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion was released. I could play it, but only after downloading a third party hack, and on low settings that made it look worse than the previous version, and ranging from fairly jerky to unplayable jerky depending on where I was in the game. The problem was my Graphics card, the computer's original GeForce 4 TI...
...I have bought this PCI card a week ago.
Reason: I have got a MSI K7T266Pro2 motherboard that only offer USB1.1 ports (1.5Mbytes/s maximum transfer rate).
Since I have got devices that uses USB2.0 and without breaking my piggy bank to upgrade my computer, the most economical way is to install a PCI card that offers USB2.0 connections (up to 480Mbits/s or 60Mbytes/s, 40X faster than USB1.1) for 1 internal port and 4 external ports.
Before you buy a USB2.0 PCI card, make sure that your motherboard got version 2.2 PCI slots which are USB2.0 compatible.
If your motherboard hasn't got version 2.2 PCI slots or higher, don't bother. You need a motherboard upgrade.
Also, your operating system needs to be windows 2000 service pack 4 or windows XP which provides appropriate drivers to support USB2.0. For the other operation systems...
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