The New Shape of WLAN Cards

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://www.internetnews.com/wireless/article.php/1355791">http://www.internetnews.com/wireless/article.php/1355791</a><br /><br />SD 802.11b by the end of the year? Superb! I didn't think we'd see this until mid to late 2003. The question is, if you have a Pocket PC with SD and CF slots, would you want to have an SD 802.11b, or would you keep your SD for memory and CF for expansion?<br /><br />"Fabless semiconductor manufacturer SyChip, of Plano, TX, today announced that they're getting into the 802.11b chip set space with a reference design for a secure digital (SD) input/output WLAN card...The chips will include all software drivers and complete 802.11b functions for OEMs. SyChip's modules will support Windows 2000/XP/CE (2.11 or greater), and the Palm OS 4 and higher. The products would be targeted toward consumers but will also address mobile and telecommuting areas of the enterprise. Like any standard WLAN network card, the SyChip based NICs would be able to operate in ad hoc (peer-to-peer) or Infrastructure mode (with an access point). SyChip expects an evaluation card for the embedded module, and the support material for the reference design to be ready by the third quarter, with the samples of the full SD NIC card by the end of the year." Source: Tim Toth

[jpaq]

If this is going to happen, it better happen soon, or there will be no market for it. The speed of advancement in the PDA market, as well as the wireless market, shows that by the end of 2003, or even sooner, there will be newer and/or better technologies. If that is the case, if an 802.11b SD card were to succeed on any level, it would need to come out yesterday.

[igreen]

Tough choice. Depends on the device I suppose. If it could be implemented well on my COmpaq 3870 without a huge performance loss, I'd opt for the SD 802.11 (SD on the IPaq is a slow pig) and I'd use the CF for cheaper and larger CF storage.

[butch]

I prefer a CF Wifi, I don't want to imagine how fragile à SD Wifi antenna would be...
I know CF memory are cheaper, but I think I will put a 128MB SD just for apps and the CF for expansion and big CF for MP3 and Videos...
And I already have a CF 10-Mbit Ethernet, CF Modem and CF Wifi card anyway... :-)

[michael]

Tough choice really, but I can't see this being really well recieved until there are devices with two SD slots. A SD slot and a CF slot is great, but if more and more device manufacturers are going to go with SDI/O over CF then I hope devices with mutliple SD slots appear. It shouldn't be that hard, and should make devices thinner. Ideally a device should have a SD slot at the top (for SDI/O devices) and another slot on one side for storage. I doubt we'll see any devices with multiple SD slots this year though, perhaps I should patent the idea first! :lol:

[krisbrown]

The whole thing is a joke, your card slot is your memory expansion! Take it out to download files that you can't store cos your memory is in your pocket. When are all these companies gonna get together and make a standard usuable device which everone will want and will drive content providers to write in the ppc format, these devices have been around for years and are still living in nerdsville. CF1+2, MMC, SD,SM! We need 1 memory standard.

[disconnected]

I'm pretty satisfied with the CF format; what I really want is for the Sierra aircards (like the 510 for Sprint) to get down from PC card size to CF size.

[ChrisD]

There are huge limitations to using SD slots for Wifi. The SD slot is limited to transferring data at 2.5 megabits and 802.11b can transmit at 11 megabits. So look for these cards to be convienent but not perform as well as CF or PC Cards.

This issue wil be true of all SD slots until the OEMS support more than 1 address line. Their decision to support 1 address line is based on battery life.

[st63z]

Very interesting, thanks Chris. You're always a fountain of very useful info!

[dochall]

Certainly at the moment I am not interested in an SD WIFI card. Personally I would prefer to have both BT and WIFI built into the device (disappointed the new Tosh doesn't have that as an option). As things stand the memory card I need all the time WIFI access I don't.

With the 3870 I'm happy with the SD slot for memory and CF for WIFI (in fact in my case still PCMCIA for WIFI). I can accept the bulk of a CF jacket for those times when I do access WIFI. Even with the mooted WIFI public access in Starbucks, Airports or as British Telecom are talking about a country wide WIFI network there are still times when I have my Ipaq but don't what the increased bulk.