Anyone accessing their music files via wireless network?

[buzzojoe]

I'm running WinCab on an old Dell laptop stuck above the drop ceiling in my basement, and it's hooked to a touchscreen monitor mounted on the wall. Anyway, I picked up a 400 GB external USB drive that I want to load full of music for WinCab. I could put the USB drive with the laptop above the drop ceiling, but I'd rather not unless I really have to. I have a wireless network in my house, and I was wondering if I could hook the USB drive up to my "main" computer, and then point WinCab (on the laptop) to it through the wireless network. I guess that it would physically work, but I was wondering if I would have issues with Wincab "skipping" or "freezing" during songplay due to the wireless network connection? Anyone accessing their WinCab music files via wireless? If so please let me know how it works for you!
Thanks in advance for any input! 

[Kevin Mullins]

I've tried this a little bit.... but it really boils down too how well your wireless network actually works to begin with.
I had a USB Linksys wireless network jobby hooked to my juke and it worked, but was un-reliable. The signal would drop out randomly. (even without moving anything)

With that in mind, if you have a good wireless network card in your laptop it should be just fine. As long as the network connection between the two PC's is stable then I don't see a problem with it working the way you want it to.

[Chris]

WinCab does not stream music; it loads the file completely before playing.  So you won't get skipping during a song but you'll get delays between songs.  If you are using a CD skin you could get skipping during a song as cover art loads.

[Karaokedude]

if you are having signal issues with a laptop on wireless
my laptop has built in wireless and ive just wired up a mini pci adapter in the wifes laptop and my m8 has just fitted one

asuming your laptop has a mini pci socket ( the one that takes a modem)
and you want to try running the aerial  wires up behing the screen, (or you could leave them hanging out the bottom ) ive found that the signal strenth is a hell of a lot better even with a 811b my m8s 811b gives 100% signal
where his USB belkin 54g only gave him 70% at best and the wifes DLink PCMCIA adapter was about the same

[wrooster]

I mapped a hard drive and set win cab to that drive. The delay is really not noticeable.

[dstone]

While I don't have WinCab, I use MediaPortal on some media center PCs, one of which is a Toshiba laptop which I installed a Dell 802.11g mini PCI in. I am able to stream MP3s off my NAS box without any problems and stream DVDs (in VOB format) from the video server in almost perfect shape with the exception of some sluggish behavior when fast-forwarding.

I think it really boils down to what type of wireless network you have and how much activity is going on with it. Best thing to do is a little trial-and-error to find out if it would fall within your range of acceptability.

[Karaokedude]

I agree but i have found the mini pci adapters are a lot better than USB or PCMCIA options