You might also look at USB wireless adapters. I get excellent results from a
D-Link DWL120+ -great sensitivity, and I can get it up on the dodger and out of
the boat shadow, even though it has only a small dipole antenna. The D-Link+
vendor software (actually from TI) works well under XP. The DWL120+ had the
best sensitivity I could find by far a year or so ago, but there may be much
better chipsets on the market now. You can also get fairly good omnis for some
of the pc cards, but the directional ones were too hard to point on a boat in my
experience.
"larry" wrote:

I am just now using wireless LAN for the first time and the "micro
squuash" xp uatility has almost no user interface. I am about to get a
PCMIA WLS LAN card and use it's software. It needs to have an
external ant in (prefer BNC) and then good user software. Any
suggestions or warnings out there? BTW thanks everyone for the many
relevant responses, Larry
Bruce in Alaska wrote:
In article .com,
"larry" wrote:

A PCMIA card sounds like the way to go.I'll start looking at
antennas
and patterns. An adjustable focus (like in a flashlight ) would be
cool. Larry


Never seen one of those, (adjustable focus (like in a flashlight ))
but I have used WiFi for links up to 16 miles with external antennas.
I have an open WiFi connection that I make available for vessels
that come visit my port in Alaska, using WAP's located at the dock,
and on 60' antenna towers at both ends of town. Works very well,
unless your an XP user and then it is problematic due to
MicroSquuash's
truely BAD Software. 2000Pro works very well.

Bruce in alaska
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add a 2 before @