Originally posted by: Syndicate
The description at frys is confusing. Says its 1.5 Mbps then states it helps eliminate lag associated with slower 54 Mbps and 11 Mbps (Wireless B & G) networks. Unless its actually 1.5 MBps, 1.5 Mbps is significantly slower then 11 or 54. Am I missing something?
Bandwidth: how much can go through the pipe at the same time
Latency: how quickly it takes to go from one end of the pipe to the other
My favorite illustration is a 747 full of hard drives vs. a typical Internet connection. Say you want to get data from LA to NYC. The 747 full of hard drives will have massive bandwidth (petabytes per hour) but pretty bad latency (at best, it will take 5-6 hours to get any data at all from LA to NYC, and that's not counting all the time to hook up all the hard drives, copy the data, etc.). A typical DSL line will offer much worse bandwidth, but it can start getting data within milliseconds, offering very good latency. For gaming purposes, latency is MUCH more important than bandwidth.
I bought one of these a few weeks ago with the woot.com deal that was posted here. It was like $20 shipped.... this deal is almost as good.
It came in really handy. My initial thought was just like the OP, I'll buy one instead of paying $100 for the Xbox 360 wireless adapter (even though I don't have a 360 yet, and if I did, it wouldn't be a problem to run Cat5 to it). You know, just planning ahead because it's a good deal. And I ended up needing it the next week when I put an older, non-wireless-equipped Mac in a place where I really didn't want to run Cat5! (cheap Mac-compatible wireless cards are hard to come by... I've got like 3 various PCI wifi cards sitting around, but no, they don't work in a Mac. *sigh*) Anyway, that compy will only see occasional use, but the Logitech wireless thingy works very well.