Did I buy wireless card for Wi-Fi?

[jp7388]

I purchased the D-Link DWL-650 PCMCIA card that's 802.11b compatible. A fellow student actually told me that the most basic card is needed because Wi-Fi doesn't extend beyond that speed wise; I should only look at the Mbps when I'm looking to transfer data files and whatnot. So what will be better? One of those new cards they have out now? Or this pretty simple one? :confused:

http://support.dlink.com/products/view.asp?productid=DWL%2D650M

[JackMDS]

In a practical way your friend is right.

Wireless does go beyond 802.11b (which is the card that you got).

However if you do not have your own Wireless network and thus use Public Access (or school network) to get to the Internet, it is very very rare to find a source that is beyond the capacity of the Card that you have.

So right now, a faster card would not do any thing more for you.

Look at the middle of this page for info about Wireless "Speed", http://www.ezlan.net/Wireless_Hardware.html

:cool:

[jp7388]

Thanks JackMDS! :D I just want to hook up to the school Wi-Fi so this is purley for Internet usage. Thanks for the link too, answered some other questions that I had.

Just out of curiosity, how fast is a typical Wi-Fi network?