Hardware Abit Airpace WiFi PCI-E card

WEP is a cake walk but WPA is pretty secure.

 

As promised:



Works fine under Vista.

 

Hmmmm, looks like I might need to go out an buy one of these. I have an older MSI wireless NIC that doesn't work at all under Vista so this looks like a good buy to me.

 

Well, this review highlights how price comparison engines can be a bit crap, frankly! Microdirect's price is a rip off- Scan have it for £15 , and frequently have it in their 'Today Only' offers for £11.50ish, too. An even better way to use those x1 slots at those prices!

 

I don't really believe that, if your sitting there on a laptop, sure wireless is useful
But wireless costs a lot more, it has range and stability problems, and often a wired connection is just plain easier (and more secure)
If i ever had the choice between a network cable, and wireless, i would choose wireless every time

Also, even though hardwired networks are much cheaper, they are usually much faster, if you have wireless g network, your talking about 54mbits (maybe 108 if you pay even more and stay with 1 manufacturer) max, and a network cable is usually 100mbits, if not gigabit

Threes something wrong with your network plug then, there is a clip that stops it falling out without you unclipping it, if its falling out when you nudge the cable, something is wrong, in fact you can give a network cable 1 hell of a yank, and it will still be plugged in (though you are likely to break something if you do)

 

Actually it's not actually the price engine's fault. Due to the way it works a retailer (such as Scan in this case) have to have the product listed in a feed which the engine reads. Sometimes for whatever reason retailers choose not to list certain products.

I'll see what I can do about getting it listed once I get into the office tomorrow.

 

Indeed!

I got mine delivered for just £20.67 - from Stuff-UK

 

Does it support WPA2 ?

 

I have one of these and it's just great. I have it in a Dell E521 in the pci-e x1 slot. The nearest AP is about 200 feet away tucked up under a concrete walkway. The sensitivity on this card is enough to pick up that whisper with all the RF from the apartments behind me and keep up 54mbs to boot. The Dell is running Vista home basic. I'm running Net Stumbler on this Vista rig with this card and have to say I'm very pleased with it.
For the price you really can't go wrong. I got mine from Intrex (www.intrex.com) here in North Carolina, USA.

 

works great under vista, and can now be had for under£10
WILL NOT WORK with windows 7, will lock up and blue screen as soon as you put the drivers in
and not much hope of getting new drivers.

 

It does work under Windows 7, but you have to use the Atheros AR5006X driver instead of the now very dated Abit driver.

 

Nice Call Krik! Esp. since Abit doesn't exist any more

/takes a bit of abit notepad on his desk to wipe away the tears.

 

I have 4 of these babies. One in each PC and the other two in the loft for when they die.

They are utterly fantastic bits of kit, and the only wireless device I've had that isn't a right PITA.

 

Hi. Very happy to have found this discussion because I have exactly the problem above.

Now either I can't find the right driver or I'm using the wrong one on Win7 (32) - I found it here

http://www.atheros.cz/download.php?atheros=AR5006X&system=4

but when I try to install it Windows says it cannot find the driver software required - so presumably I have the wrong one. I'm trying the 32-bit Vista driver for the AR5006X - is this right?

Alternatively please point me to a location for the correct driver!

Thanks.


EDIT: Got it working using the XP driver!

 

Windows 7 comes with the driver for the AR5006X. When it asks for drivers, click to Browse for one, then click Let Me Pick, and it'll be in that list under network adapters -> Atheros Communications Inc.

Me too, never forget how awesome abit was! I still get misty eyed thinking about my NF7-S...

Pretty much same here. The wife picked up a similar one from play.com, which is PCI, I reckon it's a similar/same chipset because it came with an identical wireless aerial to the abit one.

Thinking about it I might pick another one soon in case this one goes kaput.

 

Are they worth it compared to wireless N cards? whilst I don't have an N network, I was thinking about it as one would be nice to have eventually.

Then an equivalent will have come out for N I guess!

 

I'll stick with my wires for a while longer. I like stuff that just works, and both my laptops are bricked at the moment.

on the plus side, more hardware like this will start to push down prices on wired GbE hardware