Netgear WG511 Wireless 802.11g PC Card

Rating:
Summary: Terrible support and compatibility issues with Windows XP
Review: Be aware of Netgear products. They only give support for 90 days and then they charge a hefty sum. This product has compatibility issues with Windows XP. The company had to release new versions of the driver but they did not keep up with the windows automatic update downloads and therefore the product was constantly failing. Their support is miserable and outsourced to India which had to help on multiple occasions but after the warranty there was a hefty charge. I just went out and bought a Belkin wireless card and it seems to work great......Be very cautious in buying Netgear products.

Rating:
Summary: Best 802.11g PC Card
Review: I tried quite a few 802.11g PC Cards and found the Netgear WG511 to be the best, in terms of both range/reception and setup. I was able to install and use the WG511 in five different laptops (running Win2k or WinXP) without a hitch. I'm also getting very good reception from my 802.11b AP, whereas other PC Card clients had trouble maintaining the connection. Overall I'm real happy with this one.

One note of caution: WEP, the encryption used by 802.11b, is not secure! I wouldn't use an e-mail client like Eudora or Outlook or anything that might expose my passwords, without using application-level encryption (e.g., encrypted log-in in Outlook).

Rating:
Summary: Pop in the CD, insert this card, and you are wireless
Review: This card worked flawlessly with the WGR614 802.11g Wireless Router. Although the router required a bit of configuration to get working with SBC Yahoo DSL, the drivers for this card installed themselves, and the laptop started communicating wirelessly before I even rebooted. 5 stars means no configuration, no fuss, no muss.

Rating:
Summary: good luck if you have an IBM Thinkpad!!!
Review: This card have major problems working with IBM Thinkpads. I bought this more than 3 months ago and it worked fine w/ the old 1.6 driver on my Thinkpad most of the time. I have to eject and re-insert and re-login at times to get it working and recognized by the OS after my laptop wakes up from hibernation. The worst problem here is the latest driver 2.0 from Netgear doesn't work at all. Apparently, there's some issues with the WG511 card and the Thinkpad PCI Adapter (made by Texas Instrument) but Netgear support refuses to admit any problems so I'm stuck w/ the old drivers. Can never switch to WPA security. Netgear support is the worst! I tried Linksys with my Netgear 54G router and it worked like a charm.