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

[david powell]

On Tuesday 10 January 2006 8:39 pm, david powell wrote:
> 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
>
was not meant to sound harsh on this but reading it again it comes across that 
way 

its just one of those things that some fail to remeber  
4p's worth of petrol in a car doing 30mpg  will get you 0.4miles 
given city driving this is going to be a lot less , so if its closer then you  
will save but 0.4mile  given you have to get there and back would only allow 
for a 0.2mile diferance in getting there , it seems to be something that is 
overlooked more than what it should be 
guess where i am i tend to notice it more , the nearest pc world is about 30 
miles away , so the £5 in fuel is a noticable amount to get there 
in some cases i find that i could get the next model up online with postage
for the same price as pcworld plus the cost of getting there and back 

supermarkets have the same problem is it worth the extra £ cost to get to one 
10 miles away over the amount you save from the one 200 yards away 


     
> 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.
>
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