pocketnow.com Review Linksys' Wireless-G CF Card

[Darius Wey]

http://www.pocketnow.com/index.php?...=reviews&id=557

"Wireless connections can be both a blessing and a curse. Once you've accustomed yourself to having WiFi, going to a location without it is quite a letdown. And if you have WiFi available, one has to determine how much of an effort they are willing to go through in order to connect. Even after all that effort, you may only connect at half the speed you anticipated! Linksys, with the release of their Wireless-G CompactFlash Card (the first of its kind), hope to at least make some of these issues a moot point (at least for your PDA). But is a Wireless-G card really worth having on a PDA? Can your wireless woes be healed with a single CF card?"



Tim from pocketnow.com had a chance to play around with the Linksys Wireless-G CF Card. Think 802.11g makes a difference? I guess you'll have to read the review to find out. But I'm hoping to see SD versions of these 802.11g cards appear sometime soon. ;-)

[Darius Wey]

http://www.pocketnow.com/index.php?...=reviews&id=557

"Wireless connections can be both a blessing and a curse. Once you've accustomed yourself to having WiFi, going to a location without it is quite a letdown. And if you have WiFi available, one has to determine how much of an effort they are willing to go through in order to connect. Even after all that effort, you may only connect at half the speed you anticipated! Linksys, with the release of their Wireless-G CompactFlash Card (the first of its kind), hope to at least make some of these issues a moot point (at least for your PDA). But is a Wireless-G card really worth having on a PDA? Can your wireless woes be healed with a single CF card?"



Tim from pocketnow.com had a chance to play around with the Linksys Wireless-G CF Card. Think 802.11g makes a difference? I guess you'll have to read the review to find out. But I'm hoping to see SD versions of these 802.11g cards appear sometime soon. ;-)

[Deemo]

I have always been under the assumption that the PPC bus speed would limit any speed gains that G had to offer.
Is this incorrect?

[one504]

Originally Posted by Deemo

I have always been under the assumption that the PPC bus speed would limit any speed gains that G had to offer.
Is this incorrect?

No, I think you're right - that's why the file transfer times were the same (the file has to be written to storage), but web pages (in RAM) were much faster. Just a guess, though.

[ctmagnus]

afaict, the sole advantage to this card, when used in a Pocket PC, is that it won’t drag down other G users. Of course it can be used in laptops/desktops as well.

[Menneisyys]

"In the file transfer test, I connected to a personal server and downloaded a 300k .mp3. ... Strangely, the 300k .mp3 file transferred within 24 seconds on both devices. The Linksys card was faster by 1 second during one transfer, but then was tied the second time through."

24 seconds for a 300 kbytes file is VERY slow - there must have been a serious problem in the setup. vxFTP, for example, downloads stuff to main memory via 802.11b with around 300 kbytes/s, even in an iPAQ 2210. That is, using vxFTP, the file would have arrived in a second (or less), if you subtract the latency due to opening data connection ports (some tenths of seconds at most, even on a PPC).

The review should have mentioned the FTP client. I assume it was the Resco Explorer FTP client, downloading to a storage card, because no other FTP clients / setups are so slow. This also explains why the 802.11b / 802.11g clients downloaded the file with the same speed, while the Tom's Hardwre people, in their review at http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Review...dID-WCF54G.php (see also http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/foru...ic.php?t=35287 ), did see some speed difference.

See http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/foru...ic.php?t=35119 for more on FTP client speeds.

[Sven]

Originally Posted by Deemo

I have always been under the assumption that the PPC bus speed would limit any speed gains that G had to offer.
Is this incorrect?

I think that factors in as well.

There were just too many variables on the tests to make me think there was anything that could be specifically attributed to the a/g difference.

Downloading a file from the local network is the only thing you could reasonably control the variables. But then you'd want a B card and a G card in the same PPC to test the change. Preferably two linksys cards too.

Testing WEB downloads, unless you have better than a 54Mb connection to the internet would seem sort of fruitless. If you have a 1-1.5Mb connection to the net (cable, DSL, T-1, etc.) that is the local bottleneck. If the info doesn't come into the AP at more than 1.5Mb, then whether it gets from there to the PPC at 11Mb or 54Mb is somewhat irrelevent.

I have to assume that care was taken to ensure the AP was operating in G only modes to test that, and B only modes to test that. I understand that mixed clients on an A/G AP will affect the throughput of the G clients adversely, but I haven't seen a definitive quantitative review.

Menneisyys, where does the term ftp appear in the review? It just says he connected to the server and downloaded the file. That could easily be done just by openning a share and copying while watching the second hand on your watch

[Menneisyys]

Originally Posted by one504

that's why the file transfer times were the same (the file has to be written to storage)

Nope - it's just that prolly Resco Explorer's FTP client has been used, whch is dog-slow when writing to storage cards and this is why the results were exactly the same. The HTTP test, on the other hand, does show that the g card (as with the Tom's Hardware benchmarks) is indeed faster even in current PDA's.

[Menneisyys]

BTW, another CF card not having an external aerial socket...

[Menneisyys]

Originally Posted by Sven

Menneisyys, where does the term ftp appear in the review? It just says he connected to the server and downloaded the file. That could easily be done just by openning a share and copying while watching the second hand on your watch

Yes, it's not said what kind of protocol and client have been used. Not that it would be important - the resulting 12.5 kbytes/s speed is clearly the result of the protocol / the client, and not the PDA architecture / the Wi-Fi cards. Over 802.11b, using plain FTP and a decent FTP client (vxFtp), 30 times more speed is achievable. I think using the 802.11g card under these circumstances would have resulted in even more speed - around 400-500 kbytes/s.

[WyattEarp]

It's good to see that there are benefits to having 802.11g in your PDA disspite the limitations (bus speed, actual connection speed, network speed, etc.) But this is what you deal with every day you go online; sometimes pages load fast sometimes they load slow. But as long as the capability of fast loading is there it's all good .
But I won't truely be happy until I get it built-in to my PDA though... Is anyone listening... It's about time... :|