Netgear WG511U Double 108Mbps Wireless A+G PC Card

Rating:
Summary: was easy to install
Review: I ran the driver installer, plugged in the card, typed in my WLAN's security settings, and was on the network.

It worked on both an XP-Home and a Win2000 laptop, and included the option of using WPA (PSK) security. :)

My SMC8204WBR (802.11g) A/P-router is down in the basement behind the furnace, and I'm upstairs in the opposite side of the house. It's getting decent signal strength. This card's reporting 48Mbps link rate, which is fine since I don't have a Netgear "100Mbps+ high speed" A/P.

Rating:
Summary: Netgear Equals Superb Service
Review: This holiday season I was a good santa and purchased numerous wireless networking products for my various family members. Sure it was partially a selfish act as I wanted to be able to easily connect when I went to visit, but for the most part it was just an act of giving. I purchased mainly G products and they varied from routers to USB adapters to PC Card adapters. I did also purchase a couple of B products for those in the family that already had some wireless networking products (yes, I know they are backwards compatible but I didn't want to take any chances).

Only two members of the family had installation problems (considering my family is very non-technical I was quite impressed) and those two people both had yet to upgrade to Windows XP SP2. The rest of the family members were up and running within minutes.

As for the couple of family members that did have problems, well they called me first (of course) and I told them to just run back through the installation procedure again. This solved the problem for Uncle Dennis but Grandma Joyce still couldn't get it to work properly. I reluctantly told her to call Netgear's technical support (hey the reviews on Amazon haven't been too pretty for their tech support). I however was quite pleased when an hour later I got an email from Grandma Joyce thanking me for the great gift. I called her back and she told me that after fiddling with the settings with the Netgear people she was up and running within 30 minutes.

Overall, I consider this the ultimate test of product quality and support and I would give Netgear two thumbs up.

I hope this review was helpful to you in putting your mind at ease regarding ease of setup and trust of technical support if needed.