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Compaq's wireless PC Card is 3.3 volts and is manufactured by Intersil Corp. In our tests, the Compaq card had the lowest overall performance. In our call-center range tests, the wireless signal dropped off almost completely at the center of our coverage area. Whether this is the fault of drivers, antennae, access points or the PC Card itself, we were unsure. Compaq lauded the card as having superior 3.3-volt technology, citing the way it integrates with the end-to-end solution, including Compaq's handheld personal organizer. In our tests, the 3.3-volt card did use far less power than some devices, but its power utilization was mediocre--759 milliwatts during quiescent operation with power saving enabled.

Compaq's access point is a NoWires Needed OEM product. The access point is manageable only via the NoWires Needed management software, which--as we mention below--isn't particularly user friendly. The access point is a fixed-configuration device, with no removable (PCMCIA) radios.

One impressive product in the Compaq solution is the software access point. Rather than spending upward of $1,000 per access point, you can turn any spare PC into a fully functional access point with this software. Using Compaq's WL200 11 Mbps Wireless LAN PCI Card, you can build a wireless access point for less than $325 (compared with $899 for the hardware access point). The wireless access-point software can significantly lower the total cost of ownership of a wireless solution and can be an ideal SOHO solution, given that every PCI NIC is bundled with a standard-license edition of Deerfield.com's WinGate, which is a popular NAT (Network Address Translation) and proxy software package. Our tests showed the software access point is just as functional as a hardware-based access point in terms of performance and interoperability.

WL400 11 Mbps Wireless LAN Hardware Access Point, $899; WL100 11 Mbps Wireless LAN PC Card, $199; WL200 11 Mbps Wireless LAN PCI Card, $199; WL300 11 Mbps Wireless LAN Software Access Point, $125, Compaq Computer Corp., (800) 345-1518; fax (281) 518-1442, www.compaq.com.

The NoWires Needed 11 Mbps Wireless LAN
The NoWires Needed 11 Mbps Wireless LAN solution we tested was an early beta. During the course of our tests, the company was purchased by Intersil (the company that makes the Prism chipset). NoWires Needed is an OEM provider of wireless equipment for several of the LAN wireless vendors, including BreezeCom and Compaq. However, the equipment we tested was a different generation and model than the OEM equipment the company provides to other vendors.

The 5-volt wireless PC Card provided by NoWires Needed has a fixed-antenna construction. In our lab tests, the NoWires Needed card turned in the best encrypted performance--it was the only card to come in above 5 Mbps with encryption enabled. Furthermore, this card has great power-utilization statistics. The NoWires Needed product doesn't have a power-saving "mode"--it always operates in power saving. Power consumption in quiescent mode was about 150 milliwatts--lower than many of the competitors' results in power-saving mode.

The NoWires Needed driver suite is a bit sparse in terms of diagnostic tools. However, NoWires Needed took the extra effort to provide highly visible encryption warnings and information, a detail the other vendors overlooked.

The NoWires Needed access point is small but effective. Integral to the NoWires Needed solution are the options for 40-bit or 128-bit encryption, or NoWires Needed's own 128-bit AirLock security. A public/private key exchange system that eliminates the need for distributing shared keys in an encrypted environment, AirLock is an unusual and innovative feature that takes wireless security to a new level. Of course, AirLock is proprietary, and it prevents people only from "sniffing" your wireless data from the air. AirLock's key negotiation eliminates one aspect of security by not requiring the user to enter a public key. We think the trade-off of keyless security is well worth the lack of public keys. Fortunately, NoWires Needed hasn't ignored the need for standards-based encryption. If AirLock isn't available, the client will drop back to standard 40-bit or 128-bit encryption as the environment provides.

NoWires Needed provides management software to configure and monitor access points. However, we weren't impressed by the NoWires Needed management tool, which is also used by several NoWires Needed OEMs. The management software keeps its own state, which didn't always match the state of the access point, making management cumbersome. The software often didn't reflect the state of the remote access point, and sometimes changes we made weren't represented on the remote device.

Priced at $219 for a client PC Card and $999 for the Enterprise Access Point, the NoWires Needed solution is a solid performer and a good bargain.

NoWires Needed 11 Mbps Wireless LAN, $219 for PC Card, $999 for Enterprise Access Point, $499 for Small Business Access Point, NoWires Needed BV, +31-30-229-60-60, (650) 330-1466, www.nowiresneeded.com or info@nwn.com.

Farallon Communications SkyLine 11 Mb Wireless PC Card
Farallon Communications is yet another vendor offering a wireless 802.11b high-rate PC Card, but the company does not make an access-point product. We recently tested Farallon's 802.11b wireless product on the Macintosh in our Real-World Labs® at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (see "Farallon's Faster SkyLine Does Mac and Windows, Too.") Here we find it again; however, this time the tests focus on the Wintel platform. The Farallon SkyLine 11 Mb Wireless PC Card is an Intersil OEM product, but Farallon has done additional development to provide support for the Mac. Note that this is not the recently acquired NoWires Needed product we cover above, but another (older) Intersil reference design.

In the lab, the Farallon card performed around the top end of average, with a maximum throughput of 4.5 Mbps and an average of around 4.2 Mbps. WEP-encrypted performance was respectable, too, with top throughput exceeding 4 Mbps and average throughput of around 3.8 Mbps.

The Farallon card has an integrated antenna and driver support for MacOS and Windows 95/98 and NT 4. At $199, Farallon's SkyLine is competitively priced.

SkyLine 11 Mb Wireless PC Card, $199, Farallon Communications, (800) 613-4954, (510) 346-8000; fax (510) 346-8119, www.farallon.com or info@farallon.com.