NETGEAR Gigabit PCI Adapter

Rating:
Summary: Good speed, reliable
Review: My on-board NIC was fried by a lightning during a thunderstorm, so I went out looking for a new NIC. I would have preferred 3Com's gigabit cards to NetGear's, but since I needed the card ASAP I rolled with NetGear.

Installation on XP is not complicated but not trivial either. The driver that they provide is not signed by Microsoft, so it may or may not be fully compatible with the system (for all who care, the Blue Screen of Death in Win2K and later versions is almost always due to faulty device drivers).

Right off the bat the card performed very well, giving me transfer speeds higher than what I previously had. The card can detect whether the network supports full duplex and turn this feature on, or alternatively it works in half duplex mode.

I will report any problems as an addendum to this review. Until then assume that the card works as expected.

Rating:
Summary: Fails on Win2K Server, web has no drivers & incomplete info
Review: Summary: The GA311 card does not function with Windows 2000 even though Netgear's utility says it does. Netgear web info is extremely sparse: no drivers, no Windows compatibility info, nothing available at all that isn't already on the provided CD. With no functional drivers and no help on their web site, I recommend NOT buying Netgear GA311 adapters.


I installed GA311 cards on 3 different Win2K Adv Servers (SP4) and while the Netgear utility reports the cards fully functional, they fail to send or receive data on both existing 10/100 and 10/100/1000 LANs. Localhost loopback tests work (i.e. IP 127.0.0.1), but the GA311's can't communicate through their network jacks at all. I even used a LAN sniffer to confirm that the GA311's are NOT transmitting data even though the Netgear utility says they ARE sending data.

On the Netgear site, there are no drivers, only 2 pdf docs (included on the CD), and the only download is the initial firmware release which is totally useless because there is no other firmware to install (the only reason why you'd want the initial releae). On Netgear's operating system compatibility page, http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n101252.asp, the section for the GA311 is totally blank, indicating that the company's support people don't even have any info on their own product.

I've never had a problem with Netgear products and use them frequently. However, the GA311 card is a total bomb regarding Windows 2000. With a severe lack of support on the Netgear web site, I'd be leery of buying this card.

Personal note: I build & maintain Windows networks for a living. In 20 years, I've never seen a commercial network product with such incomplete company support. I am very surprised as the many other Netgear products I've installed have worked flawlessly.

Rating:
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:
Summary: Blazing speed for a low price!
Review: Wow. I bought this NETGEAR Gigabit PCI adapter, and I was amazed at the speed! I was able to transfer a full length movie (4 GB in size) in a little under a minute, and an mp3 song takes just a blink of an eye - literally a fraction of a second..

And it is only a few dollars more than a 10/100 PCI NIC that is only a tenth the speed! A great buy...