X-Micro 11g WLAN card dishes the data

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Manufacturer: X-Micro
Price: Not available yet
Requirements: Pentium III 600MHz or more, 64MB of memory, Windows SE, ME, 2000, XP
Web Site: WWW.X-MICRO.COM

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HERE'S A WIRELESS card for people who don't have that feature built into their notebooks.

The Cardbus Wlan 11g card supports both 802.11b, 802.11g and something that X-Micro calls super G, which claims to shuttle data at up to 108Mbps when it's enabled.

The card, pictured here, is a 26 gram unit which plugs into your PC slot. The package includes a driver CD which also has a 43-page multi-language manual included - a much more complete document than the quick install guide inside the package.

We have an X-Micro 11g broadband router to review which also claims to support this function - we'll return to that when we review the router.

The setup we used here at INQ HQ uses the Belkin 54g wireless network we reviewed here. Our installation showed we were satisfactorily trundling along at around the 54Mbps claimed for the card.

The card claims to have a coverage distance of 300 metres maximum. This obviously varies on local conditions, but we tested it at 100 yards and the signal remained strong.

Installation, at least in Windows XP, was a piece of cake. The comes with a set of software utilities which allows you to tweak the card, if that's what you want to do.

There's an LED on the card which tells you whether you're in business or not - if it's connected successfully to the wireless network it blinks at you, greenly. We found this to be slightly distracting - on the notebook we're using the PCMCIA slot is just to the right of the keyboard, and the green wink started to annoy us after a while. A minor irritation - the card is well built, light and does what it says it does on the box. We could always stick a bit of opaque paper over the LED to stop that insane green blinking....

When we've tested the router supporting "super G", we'll report on how well this card performs using it at then. µ