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Belkin F5D6020 Wireless Notebook Network Card

Belkin F5D6020 Wireless Notebook Network Card

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

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: after update, works flawlessly XP DRIVER
Review: i must admit it gave me the headaches at the beginning.. but then i read that there was an XP Driver on Belkin's website.. so I downloaded and installed it IT WORKS!!!!!!!!....Try it...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Belkin networking is the way to go
Review: I travel quite a bit and use various networks in my travel. I've tried several other cards made by Netgear, Linksys and D-Link and each always required a cumbersome setup before being able to get signed onto the network. The Belkin card on the otherhand seems to configure itself each time, since everytime I enter a new network, my card recognizes the signal and allows me just to sign on. GREAT JOB BELKIN!!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Broken Drivers for Windows XP
Review: I've had a horrible time with this F5D6020 PCMCIA card. I'm quite adept with wireless networks - have two laptops and several desktops with wireless cards in them. Some of the biggest problems I've had have been with this Belkin card, Windows Zero Configuration for wireless networks, and WEP secured networks. I connect to wireless networks, secured and unsecured, just fine, but the drivers are mangling ARP, and so I can't run TCPIP over the connection.

Despite the fact that the card is advertised to work with XP, it doesn't include signed drivers - and the drivers it does have are what's wrong with it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not a bad deal
Review: It is not a bad deal... range and rate are pretty good ... works very well for me ... The only big problem is installing it on XP but you should have no problems after you install the driver from the belkin website (CD does not come with XP driver)
it's a slim good piece of hardware.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It is wonderful
Review: It works great for me. easy to use. I never had any problems with it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't buy ! get Orinoco Gold instead!
Review: It's a poor quality card ! Getting it to work with XP is one pain and then software and else !! This card doesn't give you a good range (others do very good ) and is not supported by many softwares (such as Boingo.com) and networks and is not recommended either ! So I would definately ask you not to buy this card please ! unless you are a computer expert and like to deal with challenges and deal with a poor range !

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Does the job at a good price...
Review: Last week I purchased my first laptop, a 2 year old ex-demo Compaq Presario 700 series. Now my wife and I can surf the net at the same time.

I am a n00b to wireless networking and to make matters more difficult I am connecting between a Mac and a WinXP laptop, so I was quite anxious if it was going to work.

I still need to do some network tweeking, but this card, had it not been for my n00b-ness would have been working within 5 minutes of installation, instead it took me 30 minutes as I configured my Mac incorrectly... and it works great. The quick install guide was easy to read and the drivers provided work on my WinXP machine no prob.

The card sticks out of the laptop in a nice way (beats an ugly pointy antenna) which PlayStation players will be familiar with as the memory cards stick out of the PS2 in the same manner.

This card also seems to be easy on the batteries and also has power saving modes. This was a big worry as the batteries in my notebook are 2 years old. Normally I get about 2 hours charge without the card, with the card so far I have been up for 1.5 hours and I still have good power left, I think that the power drain is negligble.

If you are looking to get into affordable wireless networking, this card is a good purchase. I dont see this card as a cheapo card, its a card that delivers great value.

I am also quite impressed with the online (24x7) chat technical support that Belkin offer. I was away and chatting with the technitian stright away and he was very helpful.

A note though, the documentation states that this is a "CardBus" card which got me confused because my Laptop has PCMCIA slots... but it turns out that they are one and the same, just a different name.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Sporadic Connectivity
Review: One word: Junk. Card would only maintain connection with my D-Link DWL-1000 WAP for a few minutes before suddenly losing signal. Signal strength fluctuated between 20% and 45% and signal quality was always decent...but just coudn't maintain a continuous conversation with the WAP. Every couple mins I would get a message on my screen saying the "Wireless Access Point could not be found." When I plugged my D-Link wireless notebook card back in, it worked perfectly...same signal strength, but it never lost the connection. BTW, also bought a Belkin USB wireless adaptor for an old Win98 machine and the installation CD was practically useless. Had to install drivers manually (and even that wasn't straightforward); luckily I know a bit about PC's. A novice would have been completely stumped. Overall, I am not impressed with Belkin at all. Will stick to D-Link.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Works good..... but I have a couple complaints.
Review: Problem #1 - XP doesn't have drivers for this card and the manual included doesnt have XP setup instructions, so I had plugged in the card and ran the setup disc. The card didn't work. After removing everything and going to the Belkin website for XP setup instructions, my second install attempt was successful.

Problem #2 - When I travel, I like to see all available wireless networks and connect to unencrypted ones to use the internet. With the software provided, you must know the network name you want to connect to and enter it in the software program. I think that sucks.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Decent hardware, poor software
Review: The card itself seems to work okay. After following the installation instructions, it installed connected first time on my Win XP notebook.

However, Belkin's software is, as usual, quite poor. In the first half hour of testing, their control program froze up once and went wonky on me another time (all the tabs just vanished). I never could get the profiles feature working correctly - it's supposed to save different network profiles for different locations, but it didn't work. The worst part, however, is that the WEP password feature just would NOT work with my Apple Airport base station...if I had a password enabled on the station, it would not connect at all. I'm no dummy about this stuff, and I tried all the options (including entering the password in hexadecimal). The software, to put it bluntly, is broke.

Fortunately, the installer gives you the option of using Windows XP's built-in card control software. After uninstalling the Belkin stuff and reinstalling (selecting the Win XP option) everything worked fine, including the WEP password stuff.

I have a Belkin UPS on my computer, and the software for it is very poor as well. You think I would've learned my lesson about Belkin, but I got this card for really cheap. I figure I might as well keep it since I got it working. You, however, have been warned.


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