Bullwinkle J Moose

May 03, 2011 at 1:29pm

Quote:

By 2016, ABI Research says there will nearly as many embedded Wi-Fi modules as there will be USB Wi-Fi dongles, with the ratio to be reduced to 1.2:1. What's the hold up?

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Security should be the main reason for both desktops as well as laptops

Whenever your laptop or desktop locks up due to a targeted attack on your system and the only way to get back to your desktop is with a hard reboot (Pull the Plug), security professionals have known for a long time that it is a lot safer and quicker to get back to a functional desktop by pulling the USB adapter out of the machine than to try dealing with internal hardware

I have also had hardware attacks that affected "ALL" the internal wi-fi cards in my home and required pulling "ALL" of the cards out of the computers for a few days just to get them to work again (D-Link wireless-N) but the USB versions have never suffered such problems

The attacks temporarily killed the internal cards and "NONE" of the computers could access the Internet even after restoring working "Valid" backups and resetting the router yet the Internet worked just fine from a hard wired ethernet line to the router

After unplugging the cards and letting them sit for a few days, they all worked fine again untill they all failed "PERMANENTLY" at exactly the same time

Conspiracy theories aside...these problems never occured with external USB adapters and computer lockups are easily defeated by simply pulling the USB adapter out of the box

Have you ever had your computer lock up with a non-functional keyboard and mouse yet the wi-fi card was still transferring data at full speed without giving you any indication as to what that data was?

No?

Lucky you, but some of us has and it gives us great piece of mind to simply unplug the dongle

Eoraptor

May 03, 2011 at 12:28pm

What Dragon Said, especially here in the states where there is more than one standard for each 3/g and 4/g, you don't want to buy a laptop and then find yourself with a configuration not supported by the carrier of your choice. most internal Cellular solutions aren't even on the wifi card, but soldered to the board usually. and especially considering that there's still to this day laptops shipping with PCMCIA bus or with express34 or express 34/54, USB is just the easiest way to go.

Hg Dragon

May 03, 2011 at 11:18am

I'll take a USB modem over an embedded one any day. Much easier to change carriers should I choose to. I won't have to tear open my laptop to swap out the modem.