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Netgear MA701 802.11b Wireless Compact Flash Adapter

Netgear MA701 802.11b Wireless Compact Flash Adapter

List Price:
Your Price: $65.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Connection Drops
Review: I tryed this adaptor with multiple PDAs and multiple APs. In all cases, I have experienced sporadic droping of connections. Only fix is to repeatly restart and poweroff my pda. RMAed, hopefully it was just a bad card. It very hard to communicate with Netgears tech support. Very little English speaking reps.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: It works on both PocketPC and PC
Review: I use this card on my Audiovox Maestro. It works fine and makes PDA really powerful and having a lot of fun. Potability and mobility, that is really PDA should do. But without internet connection, the functions of PDA are really limited.

Another great thing is it also works on laptops if you buy a PCMCIA to CompactFlash adapter (less than $10 anywhere). Netgear doesn't provide the driver of MA701 under Windows, but you can install MA401's driver for MA701. It works perfectly. If you have both laptop and pda, it will save a lot of money to buy another PC wireless card...

Problem I have met: sometimes it (used on PDA) takes long time (more than 1 min) to get connection while the signal is weak. However no such problem if used on my laptop.

Overall it is a good product and highly recommended.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Works like a champ with a Dell Axim PDA
Review: I was able to install the drivers with no problems on a laptop with XP. I am using a Linksys Access Point with the 128 WEP enabled. Due to the multi-vendor nature of things. I had to manually enter in the key on the PDA as opposed to letting it autogenerate a key. Not a big problem. I expected that. Works like a champ. I would recommend it as a nice inexpensive alternative considering I got mine for 30 dollars after rebates... :) Im cheap..

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Works great!
Review: I've been using this card for about a year now and haven't ever had any problems with it. First used it with my Audiovox Maestro and now my Dell Axim. I can go outside, to the garage, or anywhere else in the house and never lose my connection. Great product!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Works great - when it works
Review: Originally the product was great in my dell Axim, only problem I had was that there was no support for it with a few of the common network testing apps. No big deal, I could work around that, and I didn't need to do any wardriving anyway. My first card was great, great reception at both home and office. After about 3 months the card started acting strange, dropping onnections, then the device stopped recognizing it. Netgear replaced the card without any problems (I agree with the comment that Netgear tech support needs a few more English speaking reps). The second card worked great, no problems until now, about 2 and a half months later, and it is dropping the signal again. I can sit in one spot 15 feet from the AP and watch the signal vary between 0 and 100 percent. Very frustrating. I guess it's time to call support for another card.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Works great - when it works
Review: Originally the product was great in my dell Axim, only problem I had was that there was no support for it with a few of the common network testing apps. No big deal, I could work around that, and I didn't need to do any wardriving anyway. My first card was great, great reception at both home and office. After about 3 months the card started acting strange, dropping onnections, then the device stopped recognizing it. Netgear replaced the card without any problems (I agree with the comment that Netgear tech support needs a few more English speaking reps). The second card worked great, no problems until now, about 2 and a half months later, and it is dropping the signal again. I can sit in one spot 15 feet from the AP and watch the signal vary between 0 and 100 percent. Very frustrating. I guess it's time to call support for another card.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: No Pocket PC 2003 drivers
Review: This card is extremely flaky with Windows Mobile 2003. Watch out... there aren't any drivers available (yet). Too bad because it's (relatively) inexpensive.

Rating: 5 stars
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.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Very unreliable
Review: When I first got this card I had a jornada 568 (pocket pc 2002). After a few weeks of it working fine, my pda stopped recognizing it saying "Unrecognized card". I RMAed it and when I got the replacement it worked for just long enough for my warranty to run out and then did the same thing, by this time I had a pocket pc 2003 device (axim). I don't recommend this card to anyone, as 2 bad cards in a row is terribly unreliable.


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