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(More customer reviews)So you want wireless Internet for your home? This is what you need. This card, a wireless router and either a subscribed DSL or cable connection (modem usually provided by your Internet company).
Unless you want to connect solely to your PDA and cellphone, don't get a bluetooth adapter (I was hoping that would be the cheap alternative to get me hooked up, but it's not). You have to have the two pieces of hardware to make it work -- the pci card and the router.
I've been a PC girl all my life, but recently bought an Ibook. I also bought an airport express base station with itunes so that I could have my Ibook online at the same time as my PC, but you could buy any wireless router. However, the aiport base is so easy to use, I highly recommend getting one, takes the headache out of configuring your wireless and allows you to play your stereo in any room of your home (a neat perk). You basically just attach your Internet ethernet cable into it, then plug it into any wall socket and it's set. Even though it's an apple router, it works just as easily with a PC. It's brilliant.
I did a lot of reading to try to figure out a compatible format that would allow both my PC and Ibook to get online and found this. The other reviews are right, this is the easiest set up of wireless imaginable. And the beauty of it is that it works just as efficiently on a PC (I own a Dell Dimension) as it does on a Mac.
Before you install this card though, be sure to drop by http://www.sonnettech.com/ downloads and get the Aria extreme PCI Windows Utility & Driver -- just have it unzipped in a new file folder on your desktop, ready for installation. For some reason the company doesn't ship a CD, and while Windows XP is automated for almost every product out there, for this one, you need to do a bit of legwork by getting the download at the website. So you'll have to be attached to your Internet before you install this card to get the download first.
Next, open your PC, install the card in any open PCI slot, close the computer back up, attach the attena, tilt it vertically up, and then reboot your computer. XP will give you a prompt to install ... just ignore this and close out. Once you're booted up, double click the "setup" file from the aria download and it will install everything for you.
Unhook your Internet cable (you only need to unplug the part that would go into your PC normally), plug it into your wireless router and within minutes it will detect your signal. All set up for your PC. If you are encountering trouble with the signal .. go down to your taskbar.. you'll see a green icon next to your clock, bottom right, double click on it and go into the configuration tab. Mid-way down you'll see something that says Network name, with a pulldown menu. For me, because I'm using an apple router, I chose "apple network" and immediately got "excellent" connection. Experiment with the choices and pick the signal that gives you "excellent."
Now this may sound more complicated than it is. I wrote out the step by step instructions in case you ran into problems, but if your installation was anything like mine, it'll take you about 10 minutes at most to get back online and WIRELESS!
As for the card itself, the speed is stunning. I am impressed that the Internet can go much faster than I already had with a straight cable modem connection.
All in all, this is an excellent solution to going wireless. I highly recommend it, and the airport base, to get you wireless-ed in your home.
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Sonnett Technologies G54-PCI Aria Extreme Wireless PCI Card (54 Mbps)pNeed an easy way to move files between computers or share an Internet connection, but dont have an Ethernet outlet nearby? Now you can add wireless networking to most any desktop computer the Sonnet Aria extreme PCI makes it simple. This affordable adapter card plugs into any available PCI slot, and configuration is a breeze; this is networking made easy. Whether you are creating a new network, or just adding on, the Aria extreme PCI does it without wires./p
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