It's not quite a wireless card, but not much bigger, and about the same price.
I've been looking for wireless options for my Audrey since I got her. She's sitting in my kitchen,
and there is no easy way to get ethernet to where she is. I know that the WET-11 has been used to
link to an ethernet adapter, but I'm too cheap to pay $100.
I noticed that wireless routers are getting to be dirt cheap since 802.11a and g have come out,
so I picked one up from CompUSA for $25 figuring that if I could make it communicate with my existing
router, it'd be a cheap solution, and if I couldn't, I could just resell it for what I paid.
Note: With possibly some exceptions for routers that support other operating modes, you CANNOT
get two wireless routers to talk to each other over wireless. They will communicate just fine
when wired, but that's not the point, is it? A friend will be buying the router. He needed one anyway.
Now I know that I need an access point, but all the access points I've seen so far are $80+, which
is more than my cheap ass is willing to pay. Until... I found the Mitsumi wavit11 on sale at
overstock.com (and other places, but shipping's $2.95 at overstock).
Not only does this access point support four different operating modes, Ad-hoc, Infrastructure,
Access point and wireless bridge, it's also the smallest access point ever made (smaller than
a pack of cigarettes). The only downside is that it doesn't support web-based configuration.
You must have access to a computer with a wired 10baseT port, which is running Windows. If you
don't have one at home, one of your friends probably does. I used my wife's PC to configure it.
It took about 10 minutes (mostly because I had to go find my WEP key) to put in into infrastructure
mode and give it an unused IP in the same range as my router, but now the Audrey is connected!
Next step -- update Audrey's firmware w/o losing my wife's calendar or address book. I'm going to
start by backing it up to her Palm.
Happy networking!
BrotherSquid
