What can I do with my wireless card???

[mirkazemisaman]

I just ordered a Netgear CompactFlash wireless LAN card for my Axim :lol: . Now here's what I have:

A Netgear wireless router connected to my cable modem and going wired to my desktop PC and Xbox.

Now my question is what can I do with this new card other than accessing the net wirelessly? Is sharing files possible (like putting a bunch of mp3s in a folder on the PC, share it, and then stream it to PPC...)? How about printing from the Axim to a printer connected to my PC 8O ? Can I sync wirelessly? Install programs? Anything else that I might not have thought of etc etc....

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[KiLLiN-TiMe]

Yes, you can stream music to your pocket pc. video is a little slow however.
You will want to get a program that will let you map network drives. I use Resco File Explorer. You might want to try that one out. They have a demo, but beware... you'll probably want to fork over the money after a few minutes... its pretty sweet.
There is a free program called Netuse. It lets you map drives, but Resco does much more.

[IronGeek]

I use mine mostly for remote syncing email from across the LAN. War walking is also fun and you can use a few of the remote control apps to administer your boxes (VNC, Terminal Server, SSH).

[mirkazemisaman]

8O WOW... I oredred this card fron Gateway Monday night and selected standard shipping. The estimated arrival date was April 18. It's here now after 2 business days!!! They shipped it and Fedex delivered it in less than 2 days....

BTW thanz for the replies, they were very helpful.

Update:
This is amazing, it's my first time online on a PPC and it rocks... much better and faster than I expected.

[EscapePod]

Check "Last Week's Tip" at this URL:
http://www.pocketpcmag.com/weeklytip.asp

Title is Wirelessly Syncing your Pocket PC

[mirkazemisaman]

Check "Last Week's Tip" at this URL:
http://www.pocketpcmag.com/weeklytip.asp

Title is Wirelessly Syncing your Pocket PC

Thanx, the article was helpful and mentioned a few points I wasn't aware of... however as soon as I got my wireless card going I opened Active Sync and just tapped the "Sync Button" on the connected PPC and apparently it worked and synced sucessfully 8O !

[smlee]

Can you sync up to a laptop with a WIFI card only and WIFI CF card for PDA(assuming same type of card 811B or blue tooth)? 0X

[mirkazemisaman]

Can you sync up to a laptop with a WIFI card only and WIFI CF card for PDA(assuming same type of card 811B or blue tooth)? 0X

Good question, I am not an expert in this field, but from what I understand you can't connect two devices using only WIFI cards (without a router), BT however should work. Coprrect me if I am wrong...

[IronGeek]

I think it should work with wifi as long as both nodes are adhoc and they have ip addresses set up.

[Sven Johannsen]

Can you sync up to a laptop with a WIFI card only and WIFI CF card for PDA(assuming same type of card 811B or blue tooth)? 0X

Yes, but you do have to be a little more technically astute to make that happen, over WiFi at least. You may have to input appropriate IP addresses subnet masks, probably host table entries, manually. Most AP/routers these days are designed to deliver all these values via DHCP out of the box. With a router/AP typically if you can find the 'server assigned' or 'DHCP' checkbox on the client (PC or PPC) you are set. It's not rocket science, but it is not innate knowledge quite yet.

BT hardware that is designed (advertised) to work with PPC, typically has decent instructions on how to get AS connected. Once that is running, you can do anything you can do from the cradle.

[mirkazemisaman]

I think it should work with wifi as long as both nodes are adhoc and they have ip addresses set up.

Wow, interesting to know... then isn't it cheaper to communicate between devices using WIFI? Why did they invent BT in the first place? :roll:

[IronGeek]

I think there are a few reasons, one of them being power consumption.

[Stephen Beesley]

Ahh now this is a good lead in to a question I have been dying to ask:

Just how much of a hit does the Axim battery take when using a wireless card?

I am looking at buying an Axim X5 bundled with a Dell wireless card but am really curious about how much it will affect the battery.

Anybody out there with any experience of this?

Goldteee

[Stephen Beesley]

Whoops just thougt of a follow up question.

I notice that with the PPC that come with built in WiFi they seem to have specific software to help with wireless profiles etc. With a WiFi card do they come with similiar software or that something you need to get elsewhere?

Goldtee

[IronGeek]

Yes, they come with software like that (at least my Linksys did). I would still recomend downloading vxUtil and vxIPConfig from http://www.cam.com/windowsce.html

As for the battery question, I know the WiFi card seems to suck alot of power, but I don't have exact numbers.

[Stephen Beesley]

Downloading as I type - that way I will have it for when I finally get the hardware :D

I guess the battery question is one of those things that it would really depend a lot on the type of usage - which I am not going to really know until I get the equipment. If possible though I rather like the idea of hanging out at a WiFi hotspot equiped coffee shop (when we finally get one where I am!) posting to Pocket Pc Thoughts.

Goldtee

[IronGeek]

Ok, I did some tests with my Linksys WCF12 while running a continuous PocketWarrior scan. After 70 Min (1hr, 10 min)with the back light off most of the time the battery was drained to 50%. After pulling out the WiFi card and doing a soft reset the battery was at 60%. I have the standard Axim battery, not the larger one. YMMV

[TheNewSteve]

While I don't know about the Dell wifi card, they all use a good bit of power, but some more or less than others. You can search around for an old thread that compared the power draw when in use and when in standby.

The Socket and Symbol (identical) are the smallest and use the least power. They can both be found used for aroud $75.

-Steve

[Stephen Beesley]

Well those figures sound pretty much what I would have expected. Where I am Wifi is only really starting to kick off but there are plans for an increasing number of public hot spots etc so I am keen to give it a go.

For the moment I guess I will just have to keep researching and dreaming until I get together the money for a new PPC.

Thanks for the comments

Goldtee

[TheNewSteve]

[quote=IronGeek]
Wow, interesting to know... then isn't it cheaper to communicate between devices using WIFI? Why did they invent BT in the first place? :roll:

Wifi is connection to a wireless network at high speed and power consumption.

Bluetooth is a wireless 'cable replacement' technology, at a low cost (or should and hopefully will be) and low power consumption.

They both run on similar radio frequencies.

Wifi is the best and fastest for connecting to the internet at your house or a hotspot or office.

But if you have the new SonyEricsson T610 that has a digital camera and bluetooth and want to surf the internet via GPRS, load pictures from the phone to your PPC or PC at home, reduce clutter on your deskspace by using a wireless keyboard/mouse or use a bluetooth headset to take phone calls with, these are all good bluetooth technologies. Bluetooth can also be used to connect to the internet via ad-hoc and a PC with a bluetooth adapter, but it is much slower. Things that are cool that are coming out: Bluetooth headphones/headset for phone (Both) and Toshiba bluetooth 5gig hard drive.... external 5 gigs that you can stream to your PPC.

So they're not really competing technologies, they just sort of overlap in possible uses a little bit. But hopefully you can see where Bluetooth is useful in ways that WiFi is not (i.e., above paragraph). I use wifi at home and it's very fast (for PC... PPC seems like i'm on about 56k, but that's the processing speed for ya).

-Steve