PCI card or USB?

alan · 7 Sep 2009 at 13:24

Hi there,

I've just bought a new pc and need to get a wireless PCI card or USB stick to connect to a Belkin wireless router.

My main question is which is better, PCI or USB, and what things should I look out for when purchasing one?

I'm using Windows 7 Enterprise 90 day free trial 64 bit at the moment, which will be upgraded to Windows 7 full version when it is released.

thanks

Duke · 7 Sep 2009 at 13:29

PCI. I would recommend to use the built in Windows wireless software as well. When you start up the PC for the first time with the card in, let it find the new card and then point it to the driver CD rather than running setup off the CD, which will install their own wireless software which are usually a bit crap.

alan · 7 Sep 2009 at 14:22

Any particular one? Does it need to be Belkin to match the router, or can it be any brand?

Duke · 7 Sep 2009 at 16:07

Any brand is fine, personally I would get a Netgear but quite a few use the same chip on board anyway. The only thing you need to match is the speed, so if your router is a 54Mbps, get a 54Mbps card, if its 108Mbps, get 108Mbps card etc.