Best Wireless Options, CF Adapters & My New 720

Good day everyone! Well, I’ve just recently DOWNGRADED (so to speak) to an almost new Jornada 720 form my Dell Axim X3. I had a 680 eons ago and I just can’t live without the larger screen and the keyboard! I’m pretty confident that with my somewhat extensive technical acumen and resources such as this amazing web site I should be able to get by for a long time!

Now, down to business… I have just a couple of questions I hope someone out there will be able to lend their opinions to. First and foremost, I’m looking for a good WiFi adapter that offers the very best (least) power consumption characteristics. I have visited the hardware compatibility page but nothing tells me how much power the device will use. Second, I see CF WiFi adapters out there but it seems to me that all CF WiFi adapters have that extra little “antenna” section that looks as though it won’t fit in the CF slot of the 720. Third, does anyone know if a CF-SD card (CF card that allows you to read/write a SD card) or a PCMCIA-SD (or CF) card will work in the Jornada.

My ideal situation would be to have a large CF card for program and data file storage and a very low power PCMCIA card for WiFi.

Any help anybody out there could offer would be enormously appreciated!!! Thanks!

low power consumption wifi cards: all the CF cards, especially socket wifi at least i heard so. don't worry anyway, no CF wifi will affect your battery life so seriously as a wifi card or built-in wifi in a pocketpc (the hpc's batteries are more powerful). if you have an 1500 mAh standard battery and it still has full capacity you should be able to get 5 hours of continuous wifi - according to my test with a senao cf wlan card and with a brand new 1500 mAh battery. another 1500 mAh battery that was used was able to provide 4 hours. and my 2400 mAh rebuilt battery can give more than 8.5 hours, sometimes 9. i repeat, continuous use of wlan! so if you use it not only for wlan you'll get even more..

cf-sd or pcmcia-sd should work, and any pcmcia-cf adapter will allow you to use the cf wifi cards. i recommend them over pcmcia wifi cards (because of consumption)..

Edited by cmonex 2005-09-06 11:20 PM

What cmonex said, plus the following

Note that the CF slot under the Jornada is for Type I cards with no protruding parts. That means you are right that the CF WiFi cards won't fit because of the antennae. Also the thicker CF Type II cards won't fit - that means no Micro Drive or CF-SD adapter, as they are Type II only AFAIK. So your best option is use that slot for a large CF memory card, which should be Type I only.

However, the PCMCIA slot can be used for all kinds of things. The PCMCIA SD card reader should work without problem (haven't heard of any that doesn't work). And also a PCMCIA CF adapter should allow you to use the CF WiFi card. Just note that you cannot use a Type II WiFi card on a PCMCIA adapter for Type I CF.

Ok... so is there ANY CF-SD adapter that is a Type 1? I have one and it doesn't say yet it seems less wide than a type II.

Thanks to both of you for the advice! Unfortunately, my "almost" new 720 won't be here 'till next Wednesday.

As an aside, it looks like some PCMCIA WiFi cards don't have the bulky antenna piece on the end but rather you plug in a wire antenna. I wonder if anyone's tried to somehow mount the wire inside the 720 thus giving you a built-in look and functionality. My guess is that despite how thin that wire may be, things are packed in pretty tight.

Concievably if you stribbed the cladding off of the antenna you could probably get it into the screen housing - there's no room in the main chassis.
The problem would be that there is a lot of juice in the LCD controler/Power regulator which if shorted would wipe out your device, NIC and give you a nasty zap in the process.

The proximity of the antenna to all the concentrated circuitry may well limit its capabilities in the first place.

I have the Compaq WL110 and the DLINK DCF660w.

My wifi PC is in a 4th floor in a building where I live.
The Compaq WL110 is a old card. I have coverage in all my house and decent MB ratio.I use PocketWinC to find hotspots.

But with the DCF660W I can connect with my PC wifi at the streets around 300 metres with a good 200k/s. And when I go out with my HPC, it detects more Hotspots than the Wl100. And the DCF660W is a low power card. I use Netstumbler to find hotspots.