Rating: 
Summary: 802.11a or 802.11b/g
Review: ...They are super fast compared to my old 802.11b 2GHZ cards and no more interference from Neighbour's Wireless LANs and Cordless Telephones. I live in an old wooden 2 story house in San Fran and get great signal strength whilst inside. Outside the signal drops a little, but it is still an order of magnitude faster than 802.11b! The drop in signal strength is too be expected from a 5GHZ device. The 802.11g standard that is coming will be running at a comparable speed to 802.11a, and is backward compatible with 802.11b. 802.11b and 802.11a are not compatible - they run at different frequencies. Due to the low frequency of 802.11g, the signal will travel further than 802.11a, but it is still prone to chronic interference - cordless phones, bluetooth, neighbours 802.11b gear. I would hold off for 802.11g only if you are an existing 802.11b user who has NOT experienced interference and has invested significant funds in hardware.
The price of 802.11a is rapidly coming down, and it is a far superior technology to 802.11b. 802.11g technology is still a good 6 months off, ... This 802.11a vs 802.11b/g war makes it difficult for the consumer to decide on which technology to use.
The analogy I would make is this: 802.11b is analagous to USB1.
802.11a is analogous to Firewire.
802.11g is analogous to the new USB2 USB2 is no better than Firewire, but it is backwards compatible with USB1. USB is widely spread, and Firewire is spreading fast. Organisations that invest in Firewire will take heart in the knowledge that Firewire2 is coming which is backwards compatible and far better than USB2! I would say within 6 months there will be combo adapters that support all standards - 802.11 a,b,g To conclude, if you are not doing the wireless thing yet, then go 802.11a. If you are a 802.11b user not experiencing interference, hold off to 802.11g.
Rating: 
Summary: netgear 802.11a
Review: Bought both the access point and card bus. Set up not simple. Had to call tech support. Don't like tech support. Always get people with accents. Not only are they difficult to understand, they were impatient. If they don't know, they send me to some website to look up my information. One time they said they would call back but never did when I had trouble setting up the WEP security access. Got it working just by fooling around. Really don't know what I did. Don't even know if it's secure. Changed the settings one time and it took it me the entire evening to get back to working condition. I relied mostly on XP Professional to set the system up and avoided Netgear's proprietary software. Connection currently is stable at turbo mode. Are the other products easier to set up?
Rating: 
Summary: Works right out of the box
Review: Bought both the HA501 802.11a PC Card and HE102 802.11a wireless access point. Installed and ran out of the box. Driver installation is a snap. Setup is a snap with Windows/XP. No reboot necessary. Changing wireless network SSID and setting WEP encryption is easy as well. I ran in turbo mode 72Mbps inside my house and connect to the cable modem for internet access. Very fast and good range too.
Monitoring the stations connecting and changing TCP/IP config via the AP web interface is very easy too.
Rating:
Summary: Works right out of the box
Review: Bought both the HA501 802.11a PC Card and HE102 802.11a wireless access point. Installed and ran out of the box. Driver installation is a snap. Setup is a snap with Windows/XP. No reboot necessary. Changing wireless network SSID and setting WEP encryption is easy as well. I ran in turbo mode 72Mbps inside my house and connect to the cable modem for internet access. Very fast and good range too.
Monitoring the stations connecting and changing TCP/IP config via the AP web interface is very easy too.
Rating:
Summary: Another Stunner from Netgear
Review: I am afraid that I am becoming somewhat of biased Netgear user. Having had nothing but unfettered success with their products, my selections are pretty much automatic. The card arrived and was plugged into my Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop. The installation was painless and in less than 5 minutes I was surfing the net over the wireless network. Granted, I have paired this with Netgear's HE-102 which probably contributes to the quality perfomance. As I write this I am approximately 25m away from the WAP with about 1.5 walls and 1 floor. This gives me a 74% signal and a 24-48MBps transfer rate and a 36-54 MBps receive rate. The lowest rate I have seen in the house is 18 MBps which is still far better than 802.11b. If you are on the fence, jump off on the side of 802.11a with Netgear's products. You won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Another Stunner from Netgear
Review: I am afraid that I am becoming somewhat of biased Netgear user. Having had nothing but unfettered success with their products, my selections are pretty much automatic. The card arrived and was plugged into my Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop. The installation was painless and in less than 5 minutes I was surfing the net over the wireless network. Granted, I have paired this with Netgear's HE-102 which probably contributes to the quality perfomance. As I write this I am approximately 25m away from the WAP with about 1.5 walls and 1 floor. This gives me a 74% signal and a 24-48MBps transfer rate and a 36-54 MBps receive rate. The lowest rate I have seen in the house is 18 MBps which is still far better than 802.11b. If you are on the fence, jump off on the side of 802.11a with Netgear's products. You won't be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: constant dropped signal and system crash
Review: I purchased the Netgear HE102 along with the HA501 cardbus card, after I had to return the Linksys WAP54A and WPC54A. There were many reasons why I had to return the Linksys. See my review of the WPC54A elsewhere on Amazon. At first, I was a little apprehensive about the Netgear after the Linksys saga. To my pleasant surprise, the Netgear's setup was a breeze. Every feature worked as advertised, including 152 bit WEP and Turbo Mode. I was able to set up the wireless LAN in less than 10 minutes. Actually, the thing practically worked right out of the box. And this is with Windows XP. Now that I have been using the network for a little while, I do have one minor complaint. There were a number of times when my connection was dropped. Although the WAP and the laptop were on different floors, the straight linear distance between the two is only about 50 feet. And I really don't expect the connection to drop in such short distance. Miraculously, the connection was okay in other parts of the house. So, you really need to play with the location, orientation, antennas, and channel selection of the WAP to achieve an optimal/compromised result. Since there is no guidance in how to do this, you have to experiment. It may take you a long time to find the right combination. After a couple of days of experimentation, I now settled on the one combination that gives me no dead spot in the entire house, but I have to give up on bandwidth. I don't get the full 72 Mbps unless the laptop is in the same room as the WAP. Everywhere else, 48 Mbps is the best that I can do, and it deteriorates very fast from there. From a different floor, I mostly get about 12 Mbps. This is a good compromise that is also acceptable for my purpose. Your mileage may vary.
Rating:
Summary: Mirror review of the HE102
Review: I purchased the Netgear HE102 along with the HA501 cardbus card, after I had to return the Linksys WAP54A and WPC54A. There were many reasons why I had to return the Linksys. See my review of the WPC54A elsewhere on Amazon. At first, I was a little apprehensive about the Netgear after the Linksys saga. To my pleasant surprise, the Netgear's setup was a breeze. Every feature worked as advertised, including 152 bit WEP and Turbo Mode. I was able to set up the wireless LAN in less than 10 minutes. Actually, the thing practically worked right out of the box. And this is with Windows XP. Now that I have been using the network for a little while, I do have one minor complaint. There were a number of times when my connection was dropped. Although the WAP and the laptop were on different floors, the straight linear distance between the two is only about 50 feet. And I really don't expect the connection to drop in such short distance. Miraculously, the connection was okay in other parts of the house. So, you really need to play with the location, orientation, antennas, and channel selection of the WAP to achieve an optimal/compromised result. Since there is no guidance in how to do this, you have to experiment. It may take you a long time to find the right combination. After a couple of days of experimentation, I now settled on the one combination that gives me no dead spot in the entire house, but I have to give up on bandwidth. I don't get the full 72 Mbps unless the laptop is in the same room as the WAP. Everywhere else, 48 Mbps is the best that I can do, and it deteriorates very fast from there. From a different floor, I mostly get about 12 Mbps. This is a good compromise that is also acceptable for my purpose. Your mileage may vary.
Rating:
Summary: constant dropped signal and system crash
Review: I used 802.11b wireless for 3 years and was very happy with it until I started using software that requires transferring of large files. I even mixed routers and pc cards from different companies, and everything integrated well. I jumped into 802.11a wireless when it first came out thinking that it'll be just as easy to install. 4 out of 4 laptops that I had crashed and locked within 5 minutes as soon as pc cards come close to the router (even with non turbo mode). After changing the router, it seemed to work ok for few days. Now, my Sony picturebook still crashes so I can't use pc card at all, signal kept getting dropped every 30 minutes or so on my other laptops, and sometimes it locks everything and crashes my server. After 2 months of wasted effort, I am very disappointed, and I am going back to wired networking (802.11b is too slow and 802.11a is too unreliable.
Rating:
Summary: Cant get it to work!!!
Review: I've got a wireless networks at home (sony base station and cards), and recently decided to give my mom the gift of wireless internet access from anywhere in her house. Seeing as how sony doesnt sell ther cool wireless components anymore (if they do - buy them just for the softare which worked flawlessly in under 2 minutes), i figured i would try the netgear setup. What a terrible experience so far. more than 6 hours into it and still nothing! the card in the laptop sees the access point, but thats as far as it gets. the DHCP server sees the access point getting an IP address (DHCP), but still thats as far as it gets. I call technical support, and they said I would need to remove my firewall and connect directly to the cable modem - to which i explained that clearly the firewall isnt the problem, since the netgear cannot see the lan, but the lan can see the netgear. Then he sugessted I re-install windows 2000 ion th server! dont buy this product...ALSO for configuration notice, the server is win2k SP3, the laptop is win98SE, the access point is a HE104, the card is an HA501. I know netgear has made some outstanding hardware products in the past - but clearly thier software developers and tech support folks are not the sharpest tools in the shed.
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