So far, I’m using two different wireless cards — the ones you see in the title there. The WMP54G v4 is the Ralink RT61 PCI card I’ve been fumbling with lately. The WPC11 v3 is a Prism(?)-based PCMCIA card that I use in three different laptops.
The funny thing, and the reason I mention it, is that I get comparable transfer speeds on both cards. The WMP54G is, as you might imagine, rated at 54Mbps, but the WPC11 is a 11Mbps card. All the same, downloads cap at 550kbps or so, on both the PCI and PCMCIA cards.
I’d blame that on the router, but I’ve been using two different ones — a Linksys WRT54G (the magical flashable one, although I kept it stock) and a NETGEAR WGR614 (I think that’s right — it’s in the other room right now). Again, both have the same transfer rates, with no improvement on the part of the WMP54G over the WPC11.
Considering the WPC11 was $19 on ebay, and the WMP54G was $50 at Target, I guess I know what the better value was. And considering the WMP54G takes a lot more acrobatics to set up under Ubuntu, I guess I really know what the better value was.
Because you have a 54Mbps card and a 11Mbps card doesn´t imply that your internet connection for the 802.11G card will be faster. Unless your internet connection exceeds 11Mbps, you won´t see any value in having a 54Mbps card. On the other hand, network connections internally will see a difference in speed as long as you have a 802.11G wireless router.
So basically what I´m saying is that the internet is your bottleneck. If your internet connection is 5Mbps, then it doesn´t matter if your card is capable of 108Mbps, you will still only have a 5Mbps access speed. On the other hand, if your internet connection speed is 30Mpbs, then you would have a reason to get a 54Mbps card.
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