Rating: 
Summary: This stuff works well
Review: The first reviewer on this page suggests having someone look at your phone wire. Fuhgeddaboudit. 99.9% chance that it's just fine. The HomePNA 2.0 (www.homepna.org) technology used on this card and others like it is designed to deal with all kinds or normal and wierd phone wiring situations. Don't waste time or money having someone check out your phone wire... the technology developers already did that for you and made this stuff so that it would work.To answer the reviewers other comment, an easy way to hook PC's and Printers by HPNA phoneline networking to a Cable/DSL connection is to use the Linksys HomePNA Cable/DSL router announced a month ago. Should be shipping in the late Feb timeframe. CHeck with Linksys on it... this is different than the bridge for sale in Amazon... the bridge makes you have to have a real IP address for each PC. The upcoming Router will allow you to share the one IP address you get from your cable/DSL company with all the stuff in the house. That's the deal you probably want.
Rating: 
Summary: Watch out!
Review: This card is really great...if you know what it can and can't do. I used to be pretty (...)at these, but then fiddled with the phone wires and (for reasons that continue to elude my comprehension) all of a sudden they're basically 100% reliable. My beef with these things is no longer reliability (which was horrible until the fiddling mentioned above), but compatability. I haven't done any definitive research on this particular subject, but these use the same technology as DSL, so it could either not work or have to share bandwidth with the connection. That's one thing (I'm sure they've got some sort of compromise), but my real issue is with lack of OS support. I'm screwed with Linux, and that's something I hope to get more involved in the house-hold. (it's really great, search for Red Hat Linux 9, (...)) In summary, for a Windows-only network without DSL (do your research if you've got it, I guess) it's ok, but check out PowerLine networking instead. Linksys has got some PowerLine stuff, and, other than the issues with this particular product, I think Linksys is a really good company.
Rating:
Summary: Haven't bought it yet, but I have done some research.
Review: This product looks pretty useful to me. As far as sharing a broadband or xDSL connection I think that you would need to purchase the Linksys HomeLink Broadband Network Bridge (HPES03). That should get the job done. However, there are several problems that I have heard or read about. First, regular phone lines are fairly susceptible to static interference. If your house has a lot of phone wiring, or if the wiring is fairly old, or if the lines have relatively heavy interference the homelink network will not work. Also, I have heard that the included internet sharing software is not very reliable and that the software developer does not support the software. The multitudes of Linksys products that work with this line (the Homelink networking line) have a lot of potential, though, and I would use this system in my house if I knew that it would work. My advice would be to have your local phone service provider stop by your house and examine the phone wiring. They should be able to tell you (for free) the amount of phone wiring in your house and how clear the connections are. Then I would ask around on the internet and maybe even the local home electronics store to see if the phone wiring in your house would be good enough to use the Homelink system. Even then, I'd definitely keep the receipts of the stuff you purchase in case you can't get the network running due to unacceptable phone line connections. I guess if your phone lines won't work for networking you can always go with ethernet category 5 cabling. But if you can satisfy your needs using regular phone line I'd stick with that. Hope this helps.
Rating:
Summary: Haven't bought it yet, but I have done some research.
Review: This product looks pretty useful to me. As far as sharing a broadband or xDSL connection I think that you would need to purchase the Linksys HomeLink Broadband Network Bridge (HPES03). That should get the job done. However, there are several problems that I have heard or read about. First, regular phone lines are fairly susceptible to static interference. If your house has a lot of phone wiring, or if the wiring is fairly old, or if the lines have relatively heavy interference the homelink network will not work. Also, I have heard that the included internet sharing software is not very reliable and that the software developer does not support the software. The multitudes of Linksys products that work with this line (the Homelink networking line) have a lot of potential, though, and I would use this system in my house if I knew that it would work. My advice would be to have your local phone service provider stop by your house and examine the phone wiring. They should be able to tell you (for free) the amount of phone wiring in your house and how clear the connections are. Then I would ask around on the internet and maybe even the local home electronics store to see if the phone wiring in your house would be good enough to use the Homelink system. Even then, I'd definitely keep the receipts of the stuff you purchase in case you can't get the network running due to unacceptable phone line connections. I guess if your phone lines won't work for networking you can always go with ethernet category 5 cabling. But if you can satisfy your needs using regular phone line I'd stick with that. Hope this helps.
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