[Wylug-discuss] follow-ups to conversations last night

[david powell]

On Tuesday 10 January 2006 4:39 pm, Nigel Metheringham wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-01-10 at 16:17 +0000, James Holden wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 10:45:09AM +0000, Nigel Metheringham wrote:
> > > These are Belkin devices which are based on the RT2500 chipset.  Also
> > > available at PC World/Dixons etc.  I have a PC Card variant and its
> > > working well, although I am having a few problems getting WPA working
> > > (which may be an issue with my router).
> > >
> > > See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Rt2500WirelessCardsHowTo for some info on
> > > the cards.
> >
> > I have a very cheap Cable & Wireless branded 54Mb card bought for
> > £19.99 from Comet. It's also RT2500 based and it's pretty good. The
> > RT2500 driver is GPL released by the manufacturer and works very well.
>
> The problem with wireless cards (and wireless kit fitted to laptops
> etc), is that some manufacturers appear to change their supplier (and
> chipset) on a frequent basis without making any changes to the model
> number, packaging etc.  I'm hoping that the Belkin's are stable.
>
> BTW the RT2500 appears to be supported out of the box in Debian
> derivatives and require modules building for RH derivatives.  Hopefully
> it will go into mainline kernel soon which will make life easier all
> round.
>
> The Belkin cards are also going (Dixons) at sub £20 prices (4p cheaper
> than your C&W one I think :-) ).
wow 4p , got to be worth the extra petrol to get there for that thats got to 
be a saving of well lets see from here  hmm  -£14.96
assuming that i can still get there for £15 since the petrol price increases 
in the last 6 months 

to be honest price of the unit is only part of the equasion , quality and 
reliability is more important 
if 1 unit costs twice as much as another  then most would opt for the cheaper 
but over a 3 year period the people that buy the cheaper unit end up replacing 
it 3 times where the more expencive one is still going strong 
not always true , but find its better genaraly 

what can be more of a factor with the same unit being different prices form 
different places is support service and other things 
support  well on a laptop would it be worth paying say £20 more if thay offer 
on site mantanance if it goes wrong rather than sending it away by post 
and waiting 2 to 3 months for them to return it 

remeber years ago i got a atari 800 it failed after 6 months and was sent back 
for repair , 8 months it took them to fix it , when it was returned it still 
had a fault and thay refuesed to fix that under garrentee as it was then 
older than 12 months 
so cheapest price is not always the best support , 
pcworld are ok , but never had to deal with there repairs section 
or advice , beeing into hardware i find that i know more than most sails 
people on computer kit and if i have questions find they seldom can answer 
them 
i still use ccl in leeds  free delevery its self  saves me more than the cost 
of going out to a shop that could offer a few pence diference 
http://www.cclonline.com/  
although dont know if they do that model of wifi card /unit 
 
Dave

>
> 	Nigel.