Best USB Wireless adapter?

Probably the best USB wifi adapter is no USB wifi adapter. Seriously, if you have a laptop use PCMCIA (also called PC Card) if desktop so for PCI card.

This is based on personal experience of weaker wireless performance, reports of overheating on some brands and the general flakiness of USB.

Because all brands depend on a small pool of chipset makers, you can safely buy the cheapest and it'll work fine. Or go for a known brand (Netgear, Linksys, Dlink etc) and you should be able to count on long term driver and firmware support. Netgear has a pretty decent support forum too.

To my knowledge Netgear -- but the same chipsets are used in other brands so check other makers' forums.

$20 !! My latest PCI wireless adapter is a Dynamode which cost £3 (say $4.50) at flea market.

The guy had a later model for £5 which he claimed was a bit quicker but this one is fine. I even like the clunky user interface and haven't bothered to install the updated driver -- amazingly the brand has a modest UK website.

Normally, I'm Netgear all the way but Dynamode seems to confirm the theory that most of these devices use the same chipsets and all the brand name signifies is better packaging and support.

If you have problems with any PCI equipment try the following:

Move card to another slot. Try temporarily removing any other PCI cards.
Have a look at Device Manager and see if the card appears at all -- and if it is sharing resources -- XP (and presumably Vista) are allow sharing but maybe mask a problem.

Open the motherboard BIOS screens (usually press Del at boot) and disable stuff you don't use -- games/MIDI adapter, COM ports, Parallel printer port (if you have USB printer).