Everything You Need To Know About Pda Wireless Network Cards
Moving your network to wireless technology has many advantages: the possibility to access the neighbor computers from almost anywhere in the building, the lack of annoying wires, the convenient weight reduction of networking equipment and the reduced power consumption, to name only a few. Let us say you have a PDA and want to increase its connectivity range. Your PDA may have Bluetooth and you may want to add Wi-Fi to it, or you may want to upgrade the Wi-Fi standard to a newer, faster version (from 802.11b to 802.11g, for example). You can manage these upgrades with the aid of PDA wireless network card adapters. There are many adapters available on the market, to suit any connectivity requirement. However, there are both pros and cons to using PDA adapters. It increases the chance of forgetting or misplacing it and it will make your PDA heavier and more power consuming. However, because technology evolves at a very fast rate, buying a PDA with more expansion slots will allow you to upgrade it in the future to whatever communication standard you might need. There are many types of PDA add-ons and they may be or not compatible with your specific PDA model. That is why it is important to check the compatibility between the add-on card and your device before purchasing it. PC cards, also known as PCMCIA, are usually found in notebooks, but there are several PDA manufacturers, which include them in their devices. If this is your case, you can use the add-on card both on your PDA and on your laptop. However, this solution has the disadvantage of age, being very large in dimensions and consuming more power than more modern solutions. Also, you may need drivers for your PCMCIA expansion card, because the device you are adding might be older. Almost all-important manufacturers produce PCMCIA expansion cards, such as 2Com, Cisco, Sierra, AT&T or Novatel. Another type of expansion cards are connected through a Compact Flash slot (CF). There are two types of Compact Flash cards, type I (which is the oldest and the bulkier), and the type II cards (which are thinner and lighter). Most PDA manufacturers include a CF slot in their devices, so connecting a Compact Flash add-on card to your PDA is a very convenient option. Examples CF cards are Linksys' WCF11 802.11b (which is a Type II card) or Belkin's F8T020 Bluetooth CF. Manufacturers have begun to produce SD (Secure Digital) expansion cards recently. SDs memory cards are used to increase the amount of memory in your PDA, but there also are SDIO cards (Secure Digital Input/Output). SDIO cards provide network connectivity, such as wireless compatibility (Wi-Fi or Bluetooth). SDIO cards (such as Socket Bluetooth SDIO Connection Kit for WinCE or Palm Bluetooth SDIO card) are very thin and light, consume a small amount of energy and this makes them a very convenient hardware solution. They are however more expensive than CF expansion cards (because of their smaller size) and somehow harder to find, but this will change for sure in the future. |
