Rating: 
Summary: Look Ma.. No Wires!
Review: Well, without getting techncial, it does the job for me. It is easy to forget I am not wired in. Did not test the sensitivity over a distance larger than a floor (~30-50 ft), but so far so good. Set up was relativeley painless. Price keeps getting better every month almost too.
Rating: 
Summary: Do your laptop a favor and look elsewhere
Review: Those of you who have read my reviews have probably noticed that I don't write too many negative opinions. In general, I am a careful shopper. I like to research, read reviews, and just do my homework before making a purchase. Occasionally, however, I do make spontaneous buys. Unfortunately, I generally find myself getting burned on these occasions. Alas, my purchase of the Linksys WPC11 Instant Wireless Network PC Card was no exception. A wireless LAN excursion I bought my WPC11 along with the Linksys BEFW11S4. The WPC11 is a PCMCIA card for your laptop that enables wireless local area networking. The BEFW11S4 is a wireless access point, DSL router, and 4-port switch combo. Both devices use the increasing popular 802.11b wireless networking standard. Wireless networking in general is a fast moving field with a number of competing standards and a whole new set of technical terms. However, in the interests of brevity, I will save a discussion of the ins and outs of wireless networking for my forthcoming review of the BEFW11S4. We're all the same on the inside... The guts of the WPC11 were designed by Intersil Corporation and use their second-generation PRISM chip set. The PRISM II is pretty much the industry standard and is used in products by Linksys, D-Link, SMC, Cisco, and others. There is actually not much fault I can find with the PRISM II. Rather, there is one major implementation flaw in the WPC11 that severely handicaps it in comparison with its competition. Let's talk about the not so bad first First, let me cover the good features of the WPC11. Overall, the build quality of the card is sound. The card itself is sturdy and solid and gives off an impression of durability. When inserted into a PC Card slot on a laptop, there is about a one-inch long portion of the card that remains exposed. There are two indication lights on portion. One is amber and indicates signal quality. A solid light means a solid signal. A flashing light means a lost signal. The other light is green and flashes during network activity. Having two separate indicators is a nice convenience. I find a single indicator light to be of marginal use. The WPC11 comes with drivers for all flavors of Windows. Installation is simple and painless. You run the setup executable, wait for it to complete, restart your computer, and voila, you are good to go. Actually, you are almost good to go. You also need to install the configuration software. The config software is well done, in my opinion. The software runs in the background and can be accessed via a task tray icon. The icon changes depending on signal strength, so a quick glance into the lower corner of your screen can tell you if you're connected or not. Clicking on the icon opens a window that allows you to quickly configure the WPC11. You can set up your network properties and encryption. The WPC11 allows for both 40-bit and 128-bit WEP encryption. The menus read 64-bit, but its actually 40-bit encryption; its just a difference in convention. The configuration utility also has measures real-time link quality and signal strength, making it easy to test the range of your wireless network. And now comes the ugly... This is where the WPC11 really falters. The range of the WPC11 is very very poor. It is by far the worst of any wireless LAN card that I have had experience with. Other reviews have mentioned a poor antenna design and I am inclined to believe this is true. As I stated earlier, a number of manufacturers use Intersil's PRISM chip set. The only real variation from manufacturer to manufacturer is in the build quality and the antenna. And apparently, Linksys chose to use a very poor antenna design that severely cripples the range of the card. A friend of mine has a laptop with a built-in wireless LAN card based off of a first-generation chip set that has easily twice the range of my WPC11. Be a smart shopper The glaring lack of range is the only real fault I find with the WPC11, but it is a very severe handicap. A quick scan of the prices of various wireless networking cards shows all the major brands to be within $10 of each other. So buying the WPC11 was basically me purchasing a lesser product for the same price as a better product. If you're looking to set up a wireless network, look past the Linksys WPC11. Though I haven't tried it myself, I've heard particularly good things about Lucent Technologies' WaveLAN PC Card. Regardless, there are at least a half dozen alternatives to the WPC11, a sad reminder to myself to do my homework and stay away from impulse purchases.
Rating: 
Summary: Easy Installation, though limited range
Review: The installation (under Windows XP) of this card, and configuration to work with Linksys's base station went extremely smoothly. The range (in a large, brick and stone house) has proven disappointing, however. Also I believe, but have not had a chance to confirm, that the card becomes somewhat flaky when it overheats in my Toshiba Satellite 1555CDT notebook. I would be cautious if your notebook computer is prone to high heat.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to install
Review: This wireless card was very easy to install and it runs very well. I am using a Linksys wirless router.
It is very nice to be able to roam around the house and be connected to the internet.
Rating:
Summary: Great card... Make sure you get version 3.0 if using Win XP
Review: I received this card a week before and I set it up on my laptop as part of a Linksys WAP11 based wireless network. I checked around for information, and found that the version of this card make a great difference. There are at least 3 versions as I know of and anything before version 3.0 are not completely compatible with Windows XP.
AMAZON SELL VERSION 3.0.
If you follow the installation instruction, you can easily get it to work in 5 minutes. But here is the tricky part. If you have 128bit WEP setup, paraphrase protection or other setup different from default. Make sure you go to the control panel, system, device manager to change it. Unlike other cards, since the control is incorporated in windows XP, you won't have any basic control other than the one in the device manager under the hardware itself. Once you figure that out, it works like a charm!
Finally, you might want to check one more thing before setting up a 802.11b network- any 2.4GHz phones. I have a Panasonic 2.4GHz phone and whenever I turn it on, the network is immediately offline. I eventually disconnect the Phone and use only a 900MHz one.
Rating:
Summary: 802.11 rocks!
Review: wirless rules the world! the linksys stuff is awesome. i was up and running in 10 minutes!
Rating:
Summary: Amazingly easy to setup
Review: Bought this together with the Linksys Wireless 4-Port Cable/DSL Router: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005ARK3/ and had them both up and running within 10 or 20 minutes. Very impressed with the quality and reliability of these products.
Rating:
Summary: Works with XP, but not always with other OS...
Review: I purchased this product along with the Linksys wireless router to set up a home network. My goal was to be able to share files, a printer, and our high-speed internet connection with our desktop in the basement and my laptop, which is usually in my room on the second floor of our house. Our desktop, for reference, is a 1.7 gHz P4 with 512 MB of RAM running Windows XP Home. My laptop is a 650 mHz P3 with 192 MB of RAM; when I first tried to install the drivers for this PC card, it was running Windows 98 SE. The desktop running XP was able to handle all the drivers and installation process just fine. No problems there. However, I could not for the life of me make my Win 98 SE laptop handle the home network setup process. My laptop wasn't being recognized by the network and wasn't recognizing the network. I even took back the PC Card to the place I purchased it from and exchanged it for another card of the same product, hoping that this card was malfunctioning. No luck. My next-door neighbor, a whiz with computers since he's a techie for a career, couldn't fix things either. I upgraded my little laptop to Win XP Home, tried to set up the network again, and HOORAY! Everything works. I adore the network I've created using the Linksys products. The speed Linksys provides is awesome, and signal strength is great as well. I give this product three stars because of the difficulty I had attempting to use it with Win 98 SE. This product is supposedly compatible with Win 98 SE, which is why I'm cranky that it wouldn't work as promised. However, for those of us with Win XP Home as our operating system, I give this product five stars.
Rating:
Summary: Had it working in less then 3 minutes...
Review: After purchasing this product in conjunction with the Linksys Wireless 4-Port Cable/DSL Router, after setting up the router, I installed this 802.11b card into my Dell laptop running Windows XP. XP found the drivers and I was literally connected to the Internet as fast as that. I was shocked with how easy this was to use. The range was awesome, as well! Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Stay away from this product
Review: I got this card for a home network and I can honestly say that this product is absolutely horrible. Set-up was a pain, and range of the card is a problem. It took me over 4 hours to set it up and get everything working. Also, about 4 months after I got the card, it suddenly couldn't connect to my Linksys router. I tried re-installing the driver, the configuration tool, calling tech-support, and even trying to use it with multiple computers (with win98 and win2000). None of the work-arounds worked. Finally, I had to send the card in to get a replacement. The replacement work for about 4 months before it too gave out in the exact same way. I don't recommend this product to anyone, except probably your worst enemy. I do recommend another brand. My SMC Networks wireless card and SMC router (for a different home network) both work flawlessly and the software setup was a breeze. It took me less than 30 minutes to get everything setup and working. I've been using the SMC wireless PC Card for over a year now, and it works perfectly, with both the SMC Router, and the Linksys Router. All I can say is that Linksys should have spent some more money on the development of this card, because as-it-is, it's next to useless.
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