Firewire are USB 2 offer high speed ways to connect to devices, making them ideal ways to connect to external hard drives or digital video cameras.

For Linux Laptops, the Zonet ZUC2700 FireWire/USB2 PCMCIA card is recommended for laptops. In Mark's testing with Mandriva 2006, the card Just Worked by plugging it in, no special drivers or configuration were required. It includes a port plug in an additional power adapter. It's not needed for low-power applications like flash card readers, or when the external drive supplies it's own power, but may be need for an external drive that depends on USB for power. No power supply is included, but ZoNet support reports that the kind that should be used with it is: "a 5v, center positive, DC power adapter".

General buying advice for wireless cards

For best security and forward compatibility, choose a wireless card that supports the WPA2 standard.

However, when connecting to public "wi-fi hotspots", typically no encryption at all is used, and a cheaper card may work for that.

Besides WPA, there is an older standard called WEP that provides some encryption, but is no longer considered secure.

The following recommendations are for WEP cards, which are lower cost and may still be of interest to some home users, as well as those primarily using the cards at public wi-fi hotspots.