I can tell you for a fact that I am using a Lucent Gold card *WITH* the newer firmware, and it works just fine with NetStumbler (under Win2k, with proper cardbus support).

The only thing that the older firmware gives you is the ability to enter a sort of "promiscuous mode". That feature, (and here's the really key part) combined with the proper software allows you to snoop traffic (email, documents, etc.) off of the wireless connection.

But for just using NetStumbler, you don't need it.

-Toomer