Senao 802.11b @ 200mW

Speed	Receive Sensitivity in dBm
1 mbps	-95
2 mbps	-93
5.5 mbps	-91
11 mbps	-89

And I will compare the Senao to two leading cards on the market today...

Cisco 350 Series @ 100mW

Speed	Receive Sensitivity in dBm
1 mbps	-94
2 mbps	-91
5.5 mbps	-89
11 mbps	-85

Lucent Orinoco @ 30mW

Speed	Receive Sensitivity in dBm
1 mbps	-94
2 mbps	-91
5.5 mbps	-87
11 mbps	-82

PCMCIA card packaging is quite simple. A navy blue (almost iomega looking) plastic piece at the end contains two female MMCX jacks and a green status LED. This LED flashes with no signal, and becomes solid on either an adhoc or AP signal. There is no internal antenna in this model...which can be good (no orinoco "leaking" of RF out the antenna while pigtail is attached) and bad (need bulky antenna or buy an extra whip to plug in end).

Im happy to report that two Senao's can fit into a typical dual PCMCIA laptop slot. But sadly, the windows drivers do not handle dual cards very well. I was unable to fully configure the two cards, as the software doesnt expect you to do this. Id imagine

A documentation quickie (piece of paper) contained some basic installation instructions. A few hints of engrish, but pretty well written.

The main install program is actually an HTML file which then "downloads/executes" various programs. A little bit bizzare, but it works. The setup program does its thing, management software runs, and at that point you can plug in your card.

Software is pretty cute, but it could be better. TX rate, channel, throughput, link quality (SNR) and signal strength are available on the first tab. Although the two graphs are nice to look at, they do not function in adhoc mode. Also, they are measured by percent, rather than dB....this annoys me since i think in dB and dont have time for silly percentages.

The second tab provides a set of configurations -- much like the orinoco profile manager. SSID, IBSS (ad-hoc/peer to peer) or BSS (AP) mode, channel, power save mode and transmit rate can be controled from this point.

The third tab provides control over WEP facilities. It can be disabled, 64bit or 128bit. Keys can be either generated or manualy input using alphanumeric or hex. You can select from up to 4 WEP keys.

Fourth tab is a "Site Survey" or "Network Discovery" tool. It provides a list of SSIDs, channel numbers, link quality, WEP status, and adhoc/AP type. Link quality falls under several vague catagories, such as "poor", "good", etc. An interesting option is the "connect" button. This will reconfigure your network card to match the network selected....that way you can easily associate with a network you have found.

It actually works quite well. Now if only it had an audio refresh and real SNR/dBm values....

The fifth and last tab provides not-so-exciting driver information.

Although I haven't started extensive testing of this card yet, I have tested a few items. First is operation without a pigtail/antenna. A Cisco 350 internal antenna has had a problem sending/receiving packets, the Senao was able to do it off the end of its connectors to a certain degree. Once I put an antenna on the card, it has worked flawless so far.

Since I could not configure the two cards with the windows utility (which you can do in Linux), I threw in an Orinoco on the top with a Senao at the bottom. With the Senao on channel 1 (uplinking to my WISP queenanne.net operated by DSL provider Cortland Communications with an external antenna, and just making use of the Orinoco's internal antenna, it worked flawlessly. SNR and receive levels were the same as usual -- even with these two suckers on top of each other. I was easily surfing the web and using VNC on my SonicBlue ProGear Webpad. I was using ICS in windows to NAT out the orinoco and share the queenanne.net connection.

Hurray for Senao! The Holy Grail of wireless! More information coming soon as I play with these cards more. If you can find a good, source, I suggest picking up a couple.