What's so good about Atheros cards??????????

I am mildly frustrated because I cannot find any information comparing Atheros cards to other cards, and specifically whether or not I should get one as an upgrade, if it IS an upgrade. Anyone have any information??????????????

 

i have an intel 3945 and it's great, i don't see any need to upgrade.
i too have heard their great, but at around $50, unless your wireless card sucks i wouldn't buy it.
the intel cards are well supported in Linux incase that's of interest too

 

Atheros are wireless cards.

 

They apparently work better with Cisco router ware or something and some say have better range. It's a good brand and well established for sure. As a consumer, it's certainly not worth "upgrading" to such a card if you already have one though. Certain banks and hospitals standardize on Atheros if an IT director prefers them or they use Cisco.

 

I've heard about atheros wireless cards before.

As far as I know, the main thing is that atheros based cards support packet capturing and logging. There are also lots of drivers available for atheros cards to capture packets. A few other wireless cards also support it, (I have a broadcom for instance) but the drivers were really hard to find and installing them disables the wireless card for actual internet use, so all it can do is passively capture wireless packets.

Why would you want to capture packets? To monitor wireless traffic I guess? For the normal user I can't really think of too many legitimate reasons. There are alot of less than legitimate uses however, like how there are programs available to crack WEP encryption once you capture enough encrypted packets, allowing you to use a WEP protected wireless network (like your neighbor's) illegally.

 

Having used both intel and atheros cards (in different notebooks). The only major difference to me was that the atheros card was better on public networks with multiple APs. The intel card, had weaker reception in general (not too serious), and I kept losing the connection every once in a while as the drivers/card/network decided to connect me to different APs. The atheros cards had a more stable connection.

If I have a choice I would certainly choose an atheros card (even if it's a little more pricy), but I certainly wouldn't pay the full price of the atheros card to upgrade it myself. It's not worth it unless the intel card has some serious issues on the network you are using (very unlikely)

 

Atheros cards are superior. They will find more connections and keep them longer and stronger. Intel cards tend to miss networks, have weak connections and range isn't as good either.

At infinity laptops we use atheros cards in all of our machines.

 

Yeah, the Atheros cards definately have better range than either Broadcom or Intel Wifi's. I have used all three and prefer to have Atheros but the only thing that bothers me is the availability. I have seen these being used by Toshiba and Acer(their low end 399$ AS3623 has one where as my $1000 HP has Broadcom). Every other manufacturer seems to stick with either Intel or Broadcom.

 

I found them alot more stable and perhaps it even uses less battery life. On my Z70va it was amazing compared to the 2915, it gave me about 20~ more minutes of battery life.

On my V6va, it's been as expected, stable and powerful. I don't see much of a battery difference anyways.