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Do not buy the Dynex Wireless G USB WiFi dongle sold by Best Buy. It's garbage.
The expository rant follows, for those with an interest in exciting tales of wireless network configuration.
Having moved to a new home, I decided to go completely wireless. This decision having been made, I needed to get USB 802.11g adapters for two computers. Two of the cheapest dongles in the store came home with me: the last remaining Dynex ($35), and a Netgear model ($40).
Installation of the Netgear USB dongle went smoothly and everything worked. Halfway through installation of the Dynex, however, Windows XP began asking questions not covered in its manual. First, it wanted to know which version of the driver to install, listing two apparently-identical options in different locations. Uh oh. Then it asked me to insert a disk, even though the disk was sat in the tray, and I had already installed the software. Uh oh.
The "Uh Oh" here indicates a flashback to an earlier time, when I had tried to install a Belkin WiFI dongle on a family member's computer, only for the exact same (and unique) troubles to emerge. My suspicions turned out to be correct, as the Dynex's software suite turned out to be identical to the old Belkin's dreadful config appliaction, right down to the mis-sized tabs and cluttered interface.
Be it the fault of the Dynex's crufty configuration software or the hardware itself (Windows' built-in zero config didn't get the dongle working, either), the Dynex was nigh-useless. Every refresh of the available networks brought up a different list (there are several on the street), and it, unlike ever other such device in my house, was unable to establish a connection to any of them, even the unsecured ones.
I feel silly for expecting the cheap crap to work, but touched by the supernatural in that it was so obviously a rebranded re-excretion of other crap that had once before crushed my eiderdown. I guess the world of USB WiFi dongles and their accompanying software is a much smaller one than the logos would have us believe.
Anyway, the moral of the story is as follows: if you need a cheap, working 802.11g USB WiFi dongle, get the Netgear.
It even defaults to using Windows' built-in WiFi config, so I've never had to confront whatever "improvements" its own software might impose.
The final irony? I'm writing this on my iMac, which makes wireless networking as easy as selecting a font.
