What is the best wireless card for mobile bittorrent?

[Honeyfrog]

While "What is best wireless router for uTorrent purposes?" is an interesting topic, it's mostly concerning home networks.

So, what is the best wireless CARD for bittorrent purposes for MOBILE purposes? I.e., I'm sitting in a Dunn Bros. coffee in a lay-over city, or some dang place else where I haven't a clue who the Wi-Fi local provider is or how they treat p2p. What's got a record of good-to-go anyhow, anywhere? Syncs well with WF auto-discovery utilities, etc.

(Assume fairly standard PC laptop.)

[ciper]

Standard doesn't help... Mini PCI? Mini PCI Express? PCMCIA? USB?

I can say that using the same antennas the Intel 2200BG and 2915ABG will have a harder time with weak signals than the average minipci card in the 2ghz range. I upgraded from a 2200 to a 2915 hoping to solve this and it didnt help

[DreadWingKnight]

For PCMCIA cards, I would recommend the WLI-CB-G54HP by Buffalo Wireless.

It's one of the few cards out there that lets you hook up your own antenna to it, and it has a very hefty transmit power.

[nos_slived]

For PCMCIA, I'd suggest picking up a "faulty/broken" Linksys BEFW11S4 router for $2 from a garage sale or thrift shop, disassembling it, and pulling out the WPC11 card in it. It's basically identical to the WPC11 that you would buy, with 2 differences: no case, and antenna connectors. The case issue can be solved quite easily if you are decent with metal work. Though it's Wireless B (though I kind of doubt you'll gets speeds much higher than 11Mb/s on most hot spots), it's a pretty good card, I've been using it for 3 years without problems. It's also Prism 2 based. I only know about the BEFW11S4/WPC11, but it wouldn't surprise me if Linksys used a similar setup for other routers such as the WRT54 series.

More information, Google it.

[Honeyfrog]

Standard doesn't help... Mini PCI? Mini PCI Express? PCMCIA? USB?

Eh, sure. Whatever they come with these days! (Tell me what's great and what's not.)

It's easily worth an extra fifty bucks to me to not have to mess around with tearing apart some junker.

(11Mb/s ...is that 11megaBITs/sec or BYTEs? Either way, what's the real-world speed you get in Kb/sec?)

Speed is important, but range and not making my new laptop hot enough to fry an egg are more important.

[nos_slived]

I use units properly. B is for byte, b is for bit, unit standardization is a beautiful thing.

The actual speed I get doesn't matter. The 802.11b technology is rated for speeds up to 11Mb/s, actual connection speeds depend entirely on the network setup and internet connection. If the hot spot you're connecting to has a connection speed of 5Mb/s, you may still be able to get speeds up to 11Mb/s with other users connected to the hot spot, but you won't get anything above 5Mb/s outside the network.

[ciper]

Eh, sure. Whatever they come with these days! (Tell me what's great and what's not.)

But we need to know what type of connection to the laptop you want to use. Its like the difference between AGP and PCI for video cards.

If you don't mind to spend the money get a card and access point that support 802.11A so microwave ovens, cordless phones and the neighbors wireless aren't slowing you down.

[Honeyfrog]

I want the type of connection which will cause me the least amount of teeth-grinding annoyances, both hardware stability-wise as well as operational feature-wise. (I have no idea, yet, what's better than what-else, but do know that salescritters are the least reliable people to ask for advice.)

For example: PCMCIA cards I can at least easily replace if one croaks -- that's a checkmark for them over some internal doohicky soldered to the motherboard.

[ciper]

Internal cards are rarely soldered to the motherboard. In fact I doubt you will find a laptop produced in the last 2 years that doesnt use a mini pci slot. They can all be replaced. The two cards I mentioned above are actually internal. To replace it was essentially like upgrading the ram (on most laptops there is an access plate on the bottom or a way to lift the keyboard). The only difference to upgrading ram is that you also have to connect the antenna wires. Speaking of antennas, if your laptop is wired for it the internal cards usually have vastly better TX/RX because the antennas are so much better than external cards and USB.

I don't think you understand my original question. Your laptop has one or the other:

PCMCIA or ExpressCard for "external" devices

Mini PCI or Mini PCI Express for internal devices

*There are a few laptops that have a single PCMCIA cardbus slot and an Expresscard slot but those are rare.

edit: Here are some pictures to help

Express cards VS PCMCIA

This picture is slightly inaccurate since a cardbus card should have bumps near the edge of a gold connector.

Mini PCI express (left) VS Mini PCI

Now do you understand that we can't just pick the best one for you?

[Honeyfrog]

Sure, but advice on the best within each category is very useful since I haven't bought the new laptop yet, and can therefore shop for whatever features I'll need based upon the advice.