# Best wireless card for a laptop

## morsatrit

I am curious to hear what wireless cards people are using and how successful they have been using them. Model numbers are good... Im looking for a good wireless card that I won't have to spend days and days configuring and pulling my hair out. Thanks in advance

--Mors

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## GeneralKane

I always stick with linksys for everything, and that decision has kept my life much less hectic.

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## MADcow

orinoco.

only orinoco.... strongest internal antennas and it has an antenna link (pigtail)

great for wardriving  :Smile: 

a tad expensive though, and scanning with it requires some patching, but i can tell you how to do it..

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## morsatrit

Any particular orinoco card?  where did u get yours?

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## J.M.I.T.

Elsa Vianect MC-11 works with an Orinoco Gold chipset... it's damn cheap... I got one for about 50€. It was worth every cent.

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## geek

I will only use Orinoco Gold cards.  They have been very reliable in my experience (only one returned to the manufacturer of over 300 in deployment here).  I'd be sure to get the Orinoco branded one, and not the new model Orinoco with is a Proxim card.  It uses a newer chipset that does not appear to be support in linux yet.  It also lacks the handy external antenna adaptor.  

My recommendation is Orinoco Gold.

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## klarnox

I've had good luck with both of my Netgear MA401 cards.

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## jay

I second this. The MA401 is a very relieable card.

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## airflow

Don't buy the Netgear MA521! This is what I got for X-Mas, and I have to bring it back and (hopefully) get it exchanged for another card which is not the cheapest crap. The Netgear MA521 uses the Realtek chipset which is only supported by half-binary-drivers from Realtek, depends on a special Kernel-Version, produces Kernel Panics when pulled out the PCMCIA-slot, doesn't support Monitor-mode and can't be used with the normal wireless-tools... But it's cheap, at least. Here (Austria) you can't buy the MA401 anymore (end of product-life or sold out, I don't know).

regards,

airflow

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## ScubaStreb

I'll third the recommendation for Orinoco Gold cards.  I had a Pcmcia card which worked awesome with my last laptop.  On my new laptop, I replaced my Intel Mini Pci 802.11b card with a Dell branded Orinoco gold Mini Pci card which works like a charm.  Driver support is great in Linux.

Cheers!

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## fleed

If you're looking for 802.11g cards then prismGT based cards are supported (www.prism54.org). I've successfuly used 3Com and Actiontec cards but the 3Com one seems to have a slightly better antena design.

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