Is it worth buying a wi-fi dongle (USB)?

[sassy]

I recently bought pokemon pearl, anyway I was really excited about the wifi facilities on the game. I do have a wireless connection at home, but my parents are strictly against messing around with the internet in the case that something goes wrong, so I was planning on purchasing a wi-fi dongle. But... I haven't seen it in stores which means resulting in buying one off ebay, which further means no returns. If it's worth it, I don't mind paying for it, but the problem is I want to know in advance if it wont work just in case. When I looked on the nintendo wifi website it said that the dongle was for users without a wireless router at home, so if I did plug in a dongle would the dongle also have WPA encryption? And I also found 2 makes of wireless routers, I would prefer to use the cheaper wifi-link model, but will it not work unlike the official nintendo usb connector?
I would really appreciate help, and I hope this is also a usefull topic for other people with the problem. ;)

[Jackster]

As for as I know the WiFi Dongle should work on a PC with Windows 2000 or XP, and I don't think it really needs to be encrypted, as far as I'm aware only the Nintendo DS can connect to it.

[Kurtle Squad]

I would (and have). It makes it easy to connect to the net witht the DS.

[sassy]

Ok, I am gonna buy a wifi dongle, but like i mentioned, should I buy a wifi-max or a nintendo one

[uka100]

I have had a Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector for some time now and I found it works great for my needs.

A few things you should take into consideration, it only works on Windows XP. So you need to have that. About the encryption, it's not needed because only DS and Wii consoles can connect to it, and you have to accept the request on the PC first anyway.

If you decide on buying one, I got mine from

shop.gameplay.co.uk/webstore/productpage.asp?productcode=DS1017&title=nintendo_ds_usb_access_point

Cheers.

[Portlett]

is it worth buying a dongle to play strikers online cos my router seems to make it slow.

[Sheikah]

When I bought a dongle a while back (before I had a wireless router) it didn't work. When I installed the disc (or downloaded the installation) it would get to the last few % then bring up a complaint.

I googled it and quite a lot of people had this problem. I took it back.

[Cube]

As for as I know the WiFi Dongle should work on a PC with Windows 2000 or XP, and I don't think it really needs to be encrypted, as far as I'm aware only the Nintendo DS can connect to it.

The Wii should be able to connect, too.

I'll give the USB connector a 5% success rate. It hardly ever works (I've used it on XP and Vista)

[MadDog]

Ive got a nintendo one and no problems for mine

[Tales]

I got the official one and it's broken. Every time I try to install it I get an error message. It it definitivily not worth 40£(I had to pay that much, may have been more)

[D_prOdigy]

A little known niggle with the dongle is that it DOESN'T WORK WITH AOL! I had to wikipedia it to find that out. But once I got BT Broadband, it worked relatively well, but it does get hot fast, and as you need the PC on for it to work, I discourage anyone to use it for long play sessions.

Personally, I now use an AOSS enabled Buffalo Router for Wi-fi, and it works flawlessly for both DS downstairs and Wii upstairs (have a guess what I'm typing this on). I found it for a mere £44 after some Froogling)