Wireless card recommendations

[George]

For Christmas, I decided to get my mother a wireless ethernet card for her laptop. However I know next to nothing about brands or even the technologies involved. So I need those of you who do to tell me which one to buy. If its available on Newegg, that would be a big plus since I'm planning to buy my sister's gift there.

-The laptop has PCMCIA slots. It also has USB slots (not sure if they're 2.0).

-My parent's router supports b and g. I don't know anything else about it, including the brand or model.

-Robustness and reliability of the connection is important. The router is in the basement and probably can't be moved (it acts as a wired router as well). That means (I think) that signal strength won't be ideal.

-Cost and bandwidth are not really important. None of the b/g PCMCIA cards on Newegg are outside of my price range.

[Jonathan]

PCMCIA is the way to go. I'd focus on g. Cnet has signal strength comparisons. Briefly, don't get Siemens Speedstream, which is what I got. Netgear has a good card, though I've not personally used one. The Intel cards are good, but I think they're mostly OEM cards, not retail. They also tend to be pricey. The Lucent/Orinico cards are good, but older, probably b only.

As long as your parent's router supports the full g standard and not some half-assed prerelease g, it shouldn't matter what model it is.

[Jason]

Don't get a linksys wireless card. The one I got 'free' with a router sucked.

[quantus]

I think it's Proxima Orinocco now or something like that... I have no clue if they're any good anymore, but I doubt they changed the older cards much. If your parents aren't doing much that's bandwidth intensive, just get a b card from netgear or an orinocco. b tends to have better range overall and if your signal strength sux, the g is just going to switch to b anyway.

DO NOT GET A USB WIRELESS ADAPTOR. THEY DON"T HAVE ANTENNAS WORTH A DAMN.