Rating: 
Summary: Works well throughout my 2 story home
Review: This card has been plug and play. I've used it throughout my 2 story home with good results. I have the SMC7004AWBR Access Point/Router upstairs with one direct connect PC, another wireless on a SMC USB Adapter. So far this system has worked well.
Rating:
Summary: Tech Support Stinks
Review: I had a minor problem getting my notebook configured. A half hour wait for tech support yielded an extremely rude and almost hostile agent. No help at all, I was ready to return product when I went to the website and downloaded firmware update. Now everything works great. I noticed that the signal strength drops to 40% when I am one room away, but even with low strength it works awesome! Very pleased after being disgusted by tech support. So go ahead and give it a try, but make sure you download firmware update.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor Signal Strength but You Get What You Pay For
Review: I use this card with the SMC router, which produces between 40% and 60% signal strength from 10 ft. away through one wall. Cupping your hand over the antenna will further diminish the signal strength to 25%. I would have to say that thest figures are poor considering the range is claimed at 150ft. I have heard that some channels work better than others, though I haven't experimented yet. Additionally, be prepared to wait for an hour to get tech support. Tech support is hit or miss. One person was really great while another got me off the phone as quickly as possible and was of no help. Too bad everyone can't be IBM. I wish IBM made these kind of products, they may not have bulletproof products but they have AWESOME tech support.
Rating:
Summary: Range is terrible
Review: I work at a wireless company and I am constantly testing wireless PC cards out. This brand card gave the worst reception out of all! Sitting 15 ft and 1 drywall away from the access point I got 60% signal quality, when others gave 95-100%. When I surrounded the end of the card with my cupped hand, (to cause signal drop), it dropped to 20% signal quality. Other cards only dropped to 60% to 75% signal loss. I know this isn't a very technical test, but it fared worst than some of the other major brands did.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Recommended
Review: I have had a very negative experience with the SMC wireless products I used for my home network. I purchased the SMC7004AWBR Router, the SMC2632W network card and the SMC2662W USB network adaptor. First the router: my intent was to couple the router to my cable modem, then wire this to an iMac. The box says it is Mac compatible, but there is absolutely no documentation on how to configure the Mac to use it. No problem, I thought, I can just download it from their site. Once downloaded, the documentation was in .doc format. Hmm - I can't read this with AppleWorks. So I downloaded it to my laptop. After about 30 minutes of struggling to get the documentation, I discovered that it offers no useful advice to Mac owners anyway. So I called customer support. After waiting for approx. 30 minutes, the support rep was nice, however, after trying several things, suggested the router was broken and I should return it. We tried several more changes and finally got it to work. It was not broken - just hard to configure. Next the PC card. This was to be loaded into my Sony laptop. I had hoped that their documentation for PCs would more helpful. Not so. Again - off to customer service. After nearly a 30 minute wait, the rep finally got on the phone. This time, no matter what we tried, we could not get the card to work. Again he suggested it was broken and I should return it. This I have done. Finally, the USB adaptor. No luck making it work with the laptop. And the included configuration utility would not even execute on the laptop. I thought that perhaps there was a problem with the laptop, so I tried loading this onto a Compaq desktop. The driver loaded ok, but the install program for the configuration utility failed. (Explains why it would not work on the laptop...) Again, back to the SMC website. I downloaded the configuration utility, installed it, and it seemed to work. The utility showed that I had good link quality. However, after numerous attempts to get the adaptor to reset the IP address, I gave up. I waited on customer service for 40 minutes and gave up there too. I would add that I have tried to reach customer service about 5 times, I have only successfully reached them twice. So, in my opinion, these products have VERY poor documentation, terrible customer service, and when you do reach the rep, they are as likely as not to tell you that the product is broken. A postscript: a suggestion from their rep. to reload the firmware on the router may have helped. Once this was done, AND we loaded the gateway and IP addresses in the laptop and PC TCP/IP settings, things starting working. I would add that their customer support reps are very nice. It is too bad it takes so long to speak with one...
Rating: 
Summary: An easy wireless solution
Review: I've spent a lot of time dealing with 802.11 networks, and I love this card. It's basically just a matter of plugging it in, popping the driver disk in, and surfing. The range has been good (at least with the SMC broadband wireless router) and it doesn't seem fazed by the large array of other wireless junk I have in my apartment. The only complaint I have is that it severely reduces the amount of life I get out of my battery on my laptop. Even with powersaving mode on, when I'm not plugged in I get about half the work-time I otherwise would.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Customer Service???
Review: I purchased the wireless SMC card and and the Wireless Barricade. I installed the card on my Tecra 8100 running Windows 98. When I installed the card and configured the settings my Internet Explorer and Outlook Express crashed every time I opened them. When I took the card out, they worked fine. SMC tech support tried to walk me through the problems, and told me that he had never seen a problem like it before, and that he didn't have time to deal with my unsolvable problem. He was very rude. I called back and got a better person, who told me that they would escalate the issue and get back with me via email because they couldn't figure out the problem(haven't heard a thing after 8 days). It could be a faulty card, and I could have got one bad support person; but the experience has been frustrating and very time consuming. From the sound of the reviews, it is a fine product and support is usually great, but be weary if you install this on a Toshiba Tecra 8100 with Windows 98.
Rating:
Summary: Go with USB connection
Review: bought the wireless network pc card, and bought the wireless USB connection, both from SMC, to work with my SMC Barricade wireless router. both the card and the USB connected unit work, but the USB unit gets better connectivity, better speed, in more places in my house. Admittedly, it's a difficult house, with very thick brick walls and steel ibeams all over the place, but the USB unit is definitely superior. Even tech support at SMC said that he'd recommend the USB in most cases, especially tough or long runs. Except, of course, then there's that wire to deal with...
Rating:
Summary: limited range
Review: The card and software took 15 min to set up and working, very easy. Once it is connected, the connection is rock solid. The data rate for surfing the web via a DSL connection is more than enough. My SMC AP is in the back of the house and I am having trouble connecting to it in the front of the house on the same floor, a little more than 50 ft away. I'd have rated it a 5-star if it could work at around 70 ft.
Rating:
Summary: So Easy To Use!
Review: I have a Thinkpad T21 Laptop (for Work) and an Apple G4 Cube (for home- can't stand looking at PC all day). I wanted to share my DSL between these 2 platforms, one wireless of couse, and cheaply. I found it in SMC! I got the SMC2632W Wireless Network PC Card and the SMC7004AWBR Wireless 4-Port Broadband Router with Print Server. They have support for the Mac OS! Hooking it up was a breeze....although I needed some help with the setup from tech support. They are there 24/7 and very courteous and helpful! Imagine that? Granted it's not a pretty design...I stashed it under the table...everything works very well.
|
