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Linksys WPC11 Wireless-B Notebook Adapter

Linksys WPC11 Wireless-B Notebook Adapter

List Price: $59.99
Your Price: $41.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Reasonable hardware, poor software
Review: I use the WPC11 at home with the BEFW11S4 wireless router. The range is acceptable in our small apartment -- good reception up to 15 feet away from the router, reasonable but prone to cutting out up to 30 feet, pretty unreliable beyond 30 feet -- and the router handles two connections simultaneously pretty well.

However, the software, both that supplied with the card and the updated versions from the Linksys website, is very poor:

- As noted by other reviewers, it is very bad at finding hotspots. I have never had the configuration utility find a network's SSID automatically; I've always had to enter it manually. My partner's Mac is always able to associate to a network automatically, so it can clearly be done.

- There is an ENORMOUS memory leak in wpc11cfg.exe, the configuration utility. I've seen it use over half of my machine's available 256 MB of memory, slowing down the performance of all my other, more important applications.

- The configuration utility has a non-standard user interface. For example, there's no "Help->About" menu item that lets you find out what version you're running. This is a baffling omission, because surely the version is one of the most helpful bits of information you can give the helpdesk. It may seem a small complaint, but it's very frustrating to find out you don't know how to make your software do standard things.

- One of the programs that it installs, vanguard.exe, crashes at least half the time when I start up my Windows 2000 laptop. I renamed vanguard.exe to vanguard.exe.bak, so it no longer gets run on startup, and everything still worked. Vendors shouldn't make you run software that doesn't do anything!

Despite these complaints, the card is an acceptable buy if the price is right; it gets the job done, and the software hasn't annoyed me enough to make me buy a different card. If there's a different card at the same price, though, consider the different card very carefully.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Pain with Win XP (home)
Review: For some reason, the version 4 of this card never worked with my Win XP home edition. The driver Linksys provided would cause my laptop to, at best, to stall and crash at other times. I just could not get it to work. My room-mate also had one (Win XP Pro). The driver didn't cause any problem on his system but he had other problems. For one the card would not find or connect to the access point if it's right next to it!! I would strongly suggest products of other brands as opposed to Linksys (I had a linksys access point which I got rid off!!)


Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Horrendous
Review: Apparently, the dowloaded driver created an MSVCRT.DLL:rtlgetntversion error message which froze my Win 98 machine upon restart. Three hour-long conversations with hardworking Compaq support staff in India and my poor machine remains stuck in some form of safe mode. I await a call from "second-tier" support.
Linksys staff were quick to blame Windows and offered no support.
Buy something else.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Frustrations galore
Review: Signal strength starts to drop off after just 10 feet, and the access point seems to randomly lose contact with the internet even when wired connections using the same lines have no problems. Extremely frustrating - you need to reset the connection frequently and on an hp PC with XP, using "repair connection" seems to hang the system more often than fix the problem. I'm in the market for something - anything - else.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Fine product, but range of Access Point has disappointed
Review: I have used this product for several years with no problems. I have found customer support to be helpful, available and (usually) knowledgable.

(Linksys wireless access point has also been fine, although I have been a little disappointed about range. We get a low signal (but still usable) at 50 feet. Not impressive, but servicable.)

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Disconnects
Review: Drops connection at times. ipconfig /renew sometimes works to correct things. Most often, I have to reboot the computer or reboot my linksys access point. I do not recommend this adapter (or for that matter the base access point).

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: WILL NOT WORK WITH WINDOWS NT !!!!!
Review: Although this product is clearly advertised on Amazon.com to work with Windows NT, under which assurance I purchased it, when I opened the box, a flyer card was included in the box clearly stating, "... it will not work with Windows NT. Therefor, if you want headaches and plan to use the adadpter on a laptop running Windows NT, go ahead and buy it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Works with my Win98 - even does WEP - signal strong
Review: I started out trying to use a WPC54GS with my Sony Vaio, but it never successfully connected to the internet using WEP encryption.

The signal range on this card is at least as good as on the WPC54GS, maybe better.

The only reason this product gets 4 instead of 5 stars is that I tried installing the latest drivers from the Linksys website. Everything seemed OK until it was time to reboot the computer, at which point startup failed. I had to reinstall Win98 (unfortunately not an unusual occurrence, recently).

If you buy this product, I strongly recommend using the bundled CD-ROM to install it. A later attempt to update the driver revealed that the online version was the same as the one on the CD-ROM.


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