NETGEAR WG111 Wireless USB 2.0 Adapter (54 Mbps)

Rating:
Summary: Stinks
Review: I bought this product for the conveninece of not having to open my desktop and for the mobility- being able to transfer it from desktop to laptop. Worked great for about 2 months and then it started causing my computer to reboot byself. At first this happened with my desktop- i was convinced my computer was broken- i spent $100 on repairs (I know I got ripped off here). Until I started using it with 2 laptops and the same thing started happening. I took it to another techy who told me that this is a frequent problemt with these usb deviced and that I would have to do something to my "bio" - i said screw it- and bought a built in card. I know other people who have the same problem and it could be very costly- when you are in the middle of working on a file and it reboots. Neygear CS sucks too- they outsources and I ended up speking to some girl in India who did not understand my question and just kept reading the same script over and over again- DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY!

Rating:
Summary: Very good product
Review: I don't have DSL or Cable modem but dial up connection. I wanted to go wireless with dial up connection and USB adapter was right choice. One Desktop (WinXP) & one laptop (Win2k) now connected with Ad-hoc (Peer ro Peer) way and sharing dialup connection without any problem. One thing you have know that ad-hoc will connect you to 11Mbps only. But I got two adapters for very cheap after mail in rebate at local store.
Installation is no big deal..insert CD comes with adapter and connect your adapter to USB port. Also work if you have USB hub. All in all small, easy to install and carry anywhere you want for wireless connection.

Rating:
Summary: Quick and easy... but not done testing
Review: I have to say that these things are pretty sweet. I purchased 3 of these for each of my computers to avoid having to limit myself to just a desktop card or just a laptop card, and to be able to hook up any computer to my home network (I also do a lot of PC repair). I have not finished testing them properly yet though. Right now my router is not in a good location, its hanging from the ethernet cable that connects to the cable modem which is balancing on top of my curtain rod because I need to mount the router in a better location and run some coax cable to the center of the house. But I get about 18-24MBps on one of my PCs and 24-36MBps on the other two. I assume with proper mounting and antenna angling I should be able to get close to the 54MBps range.

But as far as these USB adapters, my only real complaint is that WinXP doesn't have built-in drivers for them already, just to save me the extra step of having to use the install disk (I'm lazy :P)

Rating:
Summary: waste of money and time
Review: I installed this adapter on a desktop running windows xp service pack 2, well in range from my 54G wireless base station. Though signal is strong (often reporting at 54Mb and usually at least 12Mb) but the actual netowrk connection is very sporadic to the degree that it's almost impossible to browse any website without a long wait (and a lot of the times it simple drops). I searched Netgear's website and found an updated driver for this adapter to work with xp sp2, but after downloading and installing that, it didn't get any better. I then tried removing sp2 from my xp install and it didn't get any better either. My computer as well as my ISP are in good condition. When I tried an old Microsoft wireless-b USB adapter on the same computer, everything worked just fine. So I have to conclude that this adapter is really a piece of junk, especially when used with windows xp. I'm hoping Netgear would put out some better driver fix and I'll probably give one last try before throwing the adapter in the trash.


Rating:
Summary: Works great at first............
Review: I was a little skeptical at first about using this device... do to it's incredibly small size. However I quickly fell in love with how easy it was to install on my windows xp machine and the excellent Netgear Smart Wizard that sits in my system tray, making it possible for anyone to quickly get connected to their network. Unfortunately my original skepticism quickly came back to confront me. After using the device for only a few days my connection dropped. I had to unplug the thing and reboot my computer before I was able to get back on my network. I've only had it for about 2 weeks and I've had to unplug it and restart my computer probably 15 times to get it to work again. I never used to have problems in the past with my other wireless usb adapters so I have a good feeling that it's due to this devise. I do notice that it gets very hot if you leave it in your computer for a long time, I'm no engineer but this might be somehow related to its poor performance.

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: AKJ
Review: Tried and faced all sorts of problems with Windows XP SP2. Linksys 802.11b router & adapter was working fine. Thought should use this one to boost up my home netwrok speed but didn't happen. After downloading the latest XP2 driver from netgear's site (Last updated Jun 2004!!!!), can able to make it work upto some extent but now not able to connect my work machine using rdp as I have to use VPN software for my work and looks like it conflict with it. Support is not good. They made me do all those things which I had already tried. Even I mentioned the problem and what are the different steps I have already tried, I was asked to repeat them again and once didn't help, they blamed on Microsoft. I tried something on my own to make it work to at least for connecting to internet. Not much reliable and will have to go back to Linksys. Good elegent design is the best feature.