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SMC2402W EZ Connect Turbo 11/22 Mbps Auto-Sensing Wireless PCI Card

SMC2402W EZ Connect Turbo 11/22 Mbps Auto-Sensing Wireless PCI Card

List Price: $150.99
Your Price: $57.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Very easy to set up
Review: By comparison with the experience I had with a similar product by Linksys, this baby was up and running in no time. I set it up in a Windows XP machine and it was a breeze to get up and running. One piece of advice (I learned it the hard way): don't expect this technology to go be able to go through metal doors. It just will not happen. Other than that, in a more "normal" setting, it should perform just fine.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Works fine, though WEP UI regressed.
Review: I have an SMC7004AWBR router (by the way, the 1/23/03 SMC firmware upgrade finally fixed the router dropout problems). I bought the SMC 2402W wireless PCI card and installed it with no problems on a Win ME box. Reception was good- different floors of the house, about 75 feet away. Since the router is only 11mbps, I can't take advantage of the 22mbps until I upgrade the router.

For some reason, the included software configuration utility does not allow you to generate any WEP key using a passphrase- you have to enter the key manually. Since I used a passphrase to generate my existing WEP key, I didn't know what my WEP key was, so I had to go back to my router (and each wireless PC) as well to manually re-create the key. If you change your WEP key a lot this would be a nuisance. I contacted SMC email support, and though they were quick to respond, they had nothing useful to say on this matter.

Note also that this card supports 256 bit WEP keys, though my router doesn't.


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