Wireless & USB1.1

shwaip

My laptop has 1.1 ports on it, no 2.0. I want to hook up a usb wireless adapter to one of them, but it seems that all the adapters I see are for usb2.0. Will hooking up to a 1.1 port have a noticeable effect on speed? This'll likely be only for b, maybe g.

I also have a pcmcia slot. I don't want to use it. This is more of a modding project than anything.

mtrox

USB 1.1 runs at a theoretical speed of 12 Mb/second. So maybe you never hit the theoretical speed of 12 Mb/s.......let's say you're closer to 6 Mb/s. On a good day my cable modem runs just under 6 Mb/s. If you have a DSL its even slower.

Bottom line, a slow USB is usually faster than most Internet speeds so it makes no difference whether its USB 1.1 or 2.0.

That being said, why don't you just pop a wireless card into the PCMCIA slot?

shwaip

My computer has a "multiport" on the back of the lcd screen. It's designed so that you can buy either the expensive bluetooth module, or the expensive wireless module. The multiport turns out to be just a usb1.1 port (but with a weird connector) that I want to put my own wireless card into.

I guess I would notice, though, if I had a g wireless adapter and was transferring between two computers on the network?

mtrox

shwaip wrote:

I guess I would notice, though, if I had a g wireless adapter and was transferring between two computers on the network?

Yea, that's when you'd see it. USB 2.0 runs at a theoretical speed of 480 Mb/s....but 802.11G only runs at 54 Mb/s so that is the fastest speed you'd see between computers. But if you do transfer large files very often, that is a substantial speed difference.