Performance effected by WiFi PC Card?

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

"Joe Davis" <davisexpREMOVE@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:VYNgd.12876$KJ6.12378@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>
> I have an old Compaq Presario PIII 500 Mhz laptop that I was
> re-conditioning for my daughter. It runs fine by itself, but when I
> installed a LinkSys PC Card WiFi card (B), it brought the machine to
> its knees. Click an icon and it takes a couple of minutes before
> something happens. Remove the card, and it's OK again. Any ideas?
> Would it be worth trying USB WiFi?
>

I've installed -b PC-Cards in PII MMX 128MB Win98SE laptops and have not
noticed any significant performance hits not due to the OS alone. As a
test, I installed XP Home on one of these, and the OS was the
performance hit, but the wireless seemed to work just fine. I don't
think that USB will offer an improvement. Rather, I would look to the
overall setup of the computer: disk cleanup, defragment, startup
applications, free disk space, sufficient RAM.

Q

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

"Joe Davis" <davisexpREMOVE@attglobal.net> wrote in message
news:UkWgd.7342$kM.2364@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>> I've installed -b PC-Cards in PII MMX 128MB Win98SE laptops and have
>> not noticed any significant performance hits not due to the OS alone.
>> As a test, I installed XP Home on one of these, and the OS was the
>> performance hit, but the wireless seemed to work just fine. I don't
>> think that USB will offer an improvement. Rather, I would look to
>> the overall setup of the computer: disk cleanup, defragment, startup
>> applications, free disk space, sufficient RAM.
>>
>> Q
>
> Did a pretty thorough clean-up before installing. Cleaned registry,
> uninstalled software, removed over 300 pieces of spyware, etc. Is it
> possible that one brand of WiFi software takes more memory or has
> resource conflicts that another brand doesn't? Are any known for
> working well with limited resources?
>
>
>

....300 pieces of spyware... This is a show-stopper, IMO. Cleaning
these out often leaves auto-exectutables lurking around that can be
difficult to remove. If this were my computer, I would forget about
trying to clean it up and do a clean install, off line, and not go
online until firewalled and virus protected.

Q