Wireless Router + Wireless card recommendation

[carpmaster]

Hi everyone,

We tinkered with wireless networking about 1 year ago and bought a Linksys router with a Netgear card. Had quite a few problems and in the end decided to cable the upstairs rooms.

Now a friend has asked me to sort out her networking at home. She will have telewest blueyonder and has 2 PCs with one printer.

I guess wireless would be best for her because she doesnt want any fuss with running cables etc.

Which router is best these days, and which cards would go with it. She really isnt tech savvy and reliability is the upmost concern of mine.

One PC will be upstairs, one downstairs. Printer needs sharing but it's probably not got a LAN connection on it.

 

[$c8t@]

Any of the Netgear / D-Link / Belkin / Linksys Wireless Routers would be upto the job... (they are all similarly priced, your looking about £40-£50)

for compatability i'd suggest buying the same manufacturer of PCI card

D-Link Router -> D-Link PCI wireless card etc etc...

As for the printer, you could just install it on one of the pc's and share it on the network, this is pretty simple to do... only problem being is that the computer its connected to will need to be on.. (bit of a hassle turning machines on or off just because you want to print a couple of letters etc)

the other option you've got is something like...

Netgear Wireless Router, Firewall and Print Server - FWG114PUK

as the name suggests, this has all the features of a wireless router but you can connect to printer directly to this via usb, meaning any of the pc's can print to it without being dependant on each other... is a bit more costly but may save you time & effort in the long run (all depends how often your gonna use th printer i guess) one thing to consider though, the printer will need to be installed somewhere near the router.

$c8t@