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I'm confused. Say my campus supports 802.11b

So all I need is an 802.11b wireless networking card, and a 802.11b wireless networking router?

What is the card/router for?

And what is a wireless network hub for?

By Nycneedhelp (Nycneedhelp) on Friday, June 11, 2004 - 10:39 pm: Edit

And what does 10-baseT ethernet mean? And what would I need for that?

By Thuff30 (Thuff30) on Friday, June 11, 2004 - 11:26 pm: Edit

You just need the 802.11b card, no router. Card goes in your computer and recieves the signal from the router (hotspot) that you college has setup throughout the campus. 10-baseT ethernet is a type of cable and you need a 10/100 port to use the cable. All new computesr should have it. Its for wired broadband internet. I'm not sure why your college would have both?

By Nycneedhelp (Nycneedhelp) on Friday, June 11, 2004 - 11:43 pm: Edit

I dunno really. It's Carnegie-Mellon, rated #1 wired campus on the U.S. so I would guess they have a lot of stuff.

Alright so all I need is an 802.11 card and a 10/100 port (which most notebooks should come with), right? Thanks.

By Thuff30 (Thuff30) on Friday, June 11, 2004 - 11:47 pm: Edit

Yeah, what are you looking at as a laptop? I'd go with the Centrino package if they have it, it comes with a 802.11 card and its lighter than a Pentium 4. It should be anywhere from 1.4Ghz to 2.0Ghz. The processor is actually a Pentium M so it may advertise as so.

By Nycneedhelp (Nycneedhelp) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 12:30 am: Edit

Gateway

Basically,

Windows XP Professional
Celeron 2.5Ghz
256MB Ram
40GB HD
802.11b wireless card.
Intel 10/100 Ethernet Adapter

All for under $1,000

By Paulhomework (Paulhomework) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 11:25 am: Edit

I really think you shouldn't buy that package with a Celeron. If you wanna go with Intel, get a pentium 4 instead. Celerons are really bad for any type of gaming, image or video editing, or anything other than surfing/typing.

By Nycneedhelp (Nycneedhelp) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 12:15 pm: Edit

And Pentium 4's destroy the battery life.

With Classes, HW, Work, and Track practice, I'd rather not have time for games. Distractions = bad.

By Thuff30 (Thuff30) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 12:18 pm: Edit

Go Centrino, Gateway's bound to have one. Celeron and Pentium 4 drink a ton of battery.
Centrino's clock speeds are deceiving, they are faster than Pentium 4's.

By Welshie (Welshie) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 01:05 pm: Edit

I will concur with the sentiment Paulhomework. Even if you don't intend to do gaming, the Celeron will really bottleneck you when you run taxing programs (as I assume you would going to Carnegie Mellon). I further agree with the option of a Centrino CPU. It is fast (has a large cache) but not too fast (a little slower FSB) and would fit well in the laptop/non-gaming setting. I hope that made sense.

-Jesse

By Nycneedhelp (Nycneedhelp) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 01:36 pm: Edit

Battery speaking, my intended notebook has a battery life of up to 4 hrs so that shouldn't be a problem.

CMU recommends Celeron/Pentium III so I don't think that they'll run taxing programs. And if they do, it shouldnt be a problem (Their minimum requirements are celeron/pentium II)

Anyway what would a 2.5 Ghz celeron be equal to in terms of Pentium 4/Pentium M performance?

Like 2.5 Celeron = 1.3 Pentium 4?

By Welshie (Welshie) on Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 09:30 pm: Edit

It's hard to make such a solid, quantitative comparison like that. The Celeron's lack cache (the "RAM" of a CPU). Consider this analogy, computers run calculations. To run these calculations they need RAM/cache to scribble on, that is, RAM/cache act as digital notepads. When the RAM/cache is lacking, the computer can only compute so much before it has to erase itself to run more calculations. If there is a lot of RAM/cache the computer can run more calculations faster without having to erase the previous calculations. I hope that made sense. Anywho, when a CPU has more cache, it can perform more taxing operations faster. Less cache, worse/slower performance.

-Jesse

By Uva123 (Uva123) on Sunday, July 18, 2004 - 06:24 pm: Edit

This may sound dumb, but where does the wireless card go? Can I install it myself or do I need to get a professional to do it. They have them on ebay for about $10 but I don't know what to do with it.