So I want to get Ricochet in the near future, but am not sure whether to go USB/serial external or PCMCIA... external lets me place it somewhere else, but adds bulk, but somewhere else, in addition to more batteries...though I hear they last 6 hours.... Versus PCMCIA, which adds bulk to the PC with height, but then it is isolated in one place, and then uses the PC battery... Now that Lucent will have a USB 802.11, I can have ricochet and 802.11 either internal or external... two antennas close to each other with PCMCIA and close to the body.. or go external and put the antennas away from each other and further from important body parts... Any thoughts? Link to Lucent's press release: http://www.lucent.com/press/1100/001128.mea.html Here is an article detailing Lucent's product in eweek: Lucent unveils wireless LAN USB client By Carmen Nobel (December 4,2000, page 47, Eweek) Lucent Technologies Inc. last week announced a USB client for its Orinoco line of wireless networking products. With the device, which is basically a radio transceiver plug-in, users can connect a desktop or laptop PC to a wireless LAN by pluggin the device into a spare Universal Serial Bus connector and installing the software drivers. The client is meant for small-office employees who need an easy-to-install device and who don't want to deal with ISA slots or having to change PC configurations, said officials at the Murray Hill, N.J., company. The device enables communication between a PC and any Orinoco access point or any other access point that supports the 802.11 wireless LAN standard. The standard supports speeds of up to 11M bps. The Orinoco USB Client is powered through the USB connector, so it does not require a separate power supply. It includes indicator lights for data traffic and supports Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows 2000. It comes in two versions based on the encryption level. The Silver 64-bit key Wireless Equivalent Privacy encryption version will be priced at $199; the Gold 128-bit key encryption version will be priced at $219. Both will be available early next year from various e-commerce sites and North American retailers. USB is currently the connection of choice for consumer devices such as MP3 players because connecting is easy, but the technology has a reputation for being unreliable. Common complaints include glitches- usually with software drivers- that occur when a user tries to run more than one USB device at a time. The Orinoco line is part of Lucent's Microelectronics division, which is slated to be spun off from the parent company by next summer. -- Subscription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org please, Please, *PLEASE* don't subscribe through a forward/false domain
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