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Linksys WPC54G Wireless-G Notebook Adapter

Linksys WPC54G Wireless-G Notebook Adapter

List Price: $79.99
Your Price: $49.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Well, it hangs my XP Professional Notebook
Review: I have a Dell Inspiron 4000 running XP Professional SP1 and while I did eventually get my new Wireless-G network up and running (with the LinkSys wireless-g router), I could not reboot my notebook with this card in it.

XP would start the boot process, but hang. Only when I removed the card did XP continue with its boot process. So I figured I'd put the card back in after XP booted (seemed reasonable), but it 're-hung' XP all over again.

Very disappointed in the quality of the drivers for XP Professional even tho' I get the XP warning about the driver not being WHQ 'certified'. Oh, and the LinkSys website had no updated drivers (and dead links to same) to help me either.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great Piece of Equipment
Review: This is a review I wrote for the router hub and the PC Card. I had already submitted it for the hub and am submitting it here also for the card. The entire review is relevant to both parts of this system. One thing I forgot to mention was that I had called Dell to see what they had available,and they were using a mix of Linksys parts as well. So i decided to go direct with Linksys equipment. Here is the review as submitted.
For an item that is not even available in Best Buy and the other major stores when I went to buy it, the fact that Amazon has these in and out of stock, and that I received it in only a couple of days is knowledge enough to make this a winning situation.
What about hookup and use? Another 5 star performance. Having never hooked up a wireless network before, I took the advice of the quick start guide that came with the unit, and used their included CD. They strongly recommended that you use the CD rather than manually configure, and they were right. Having seen the problems that some others were having with setup, only to be resolved (some of them) by exactly following the directions, I decided to do it that way right out of the box. I'm glad I did. This setup using the CD was about as easy as learning how to open a refrigerator door for the first time. Shutting off what they tell you to shut off, and turning on what and when they tell you to turn things on, resulted in a delightful install. Not even one glitch. The CD determined my internet connection, determined my system configuration, asked me a few questions, and bingo I was up and running.
I bought the PC Card for laptops as well, and that was just as easy to install. Within 10 minutes I was surfing the web from all over the house. No Wires !
Pertaining to the speed issue: I got 54Mps while I was in the same room. When I went into the living room, it went to very good instead of excellent, and gave me 37Mbps. Let's get a perspective here. A standard modem works at 56K tops. This router works at 54Mbps that's megabyte not kilobyte. Their are 1000 kilobytes in every megabyte. So 54 Megabytes per second is about a thousand times faster than a standard modem. I hooked the Linksys wireless router up to a broadband connection which is running at a maximum of 700 plus Kilobytes on the download end, and 100 to 150 upload speed. I know I am getting specific, but the point I am making is that it does not matter what the connection speed you are running at any given moment, based on how close the base unit is to the PC card. What is important is that your internet connection will never even approach the speed capabilities of this router, so don't hassle yourself with any concerns over varying connect speeds of the wireless network.
Broadband hooked up to this wireless setup flies. As soon as you click on a site, it appears on the screen.
Anyhow, just for reference, I am using a Dell Inspiron Notebook, hooked up to the broadband cable modem that was supplied by Comcast. The operating system is Windows XP. Installation was as near automatic as can be. They do supply instructions when using Windows ME, 98 etc, that includes one more step than XP.
All in all this is a 5 star piece of equipment. Follow the directions exactly. It is easy. Hope this helps.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not ready for prime time
Review: During installation, when the box popped up saying this product was not certified to work on Windows XP, they weren't kidding. The drivers never finished installing, and I had to actually pull the battery out of my laptop twice to get the CD to stop spinning. With the card in the slot, my Windows booted into safe mode every time, and the computer's performance became very sluggish. Once I pulled out the card, everything seemed fine. Linksys' web site was of no help, as it had the same driver which came in the box. After wasting two hours of my life on this mess, I took it back to the store and re-installed my "old" 11b system. My advice: try again in a few months after someone else has debugged this garbage. I will say that the 54g router was a snap to set up, but without an equivalent card for my laptop, the router too had to go back to the store.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Nice PC Card for non-BEFW11S4
Review: I've seen nothing but praise about this card so far, bought one myself to use with my B Cable/Router BEFW11S4 only to talk to Linksys support for half an hour and come to the conclusion that its not going to work with my router and I should buy the B version. Its supposed to be backwards compatible with the B standard, but its been four days now and its going back tomarrow.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Won't work with my new HP laptop
Review: After trying for hours and also calling linksys and waiting on hold forever, I was told there was nothing they could do for me and that my laptop was incompatible with this new g adapter card. Very disappointed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Works flawlessly on the two 802.11b networks . . .
Review: I've used it on so far.

In fact, I'm here at a Starbucks writing this review using the Linksys g-card & T-Mobile HotSpot (a public, subscription-based 802.11b/Wi-Fi wireless Internet service). It's nice when new products are trouble free right from the start!

It worked without incident on my home network (consisting of the D-Link 614+ 802.11b AirPlus wireless router), too.

Backwards compatibility indeed. 'Works for me.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good enough for the brave early adopter
Review: This product uses the same Broadcom draft-802.11g chipset that Belkin, Buffalo and Apple currently use. As expected for a bleeding edge product, the supplied driver is currently not "signed" for XP and hasn't passed WHQL... but it seems to be stable enough and hasn't caused any crashes in my testing.

802.11b compatiblity has been fine. It has talked to all the wireless hubs I have been close to with expected 802.11b performance.

For draft-802.11g (via the Linksys WRT54G), the average download speed from ~30 ft. away is ~18Mbps, while the upload speed is ~22Mbps. Performance does bounce around more than it should. I really don't quite understand why the upload speed is always faster; it should be about the same. WEP security does not decrease the performance, which is nice. Overall, it's a lot faster than 802.11b, which never really exceeds 5Mbps either direction. It would have been great if we could get 27Mbps transfers. Oh, well. Let's hope Broadcom and Linksys do a great job between now and when 802.11g is really a standard. And let's hope interoperability between vendors stays a priority.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "G" WiFi
Review: Great Card. I combined this with the (finally delivered) WRT5G wireless "G" router.
Pretty easy setup. Made an icon on my laptop desktop for easy network admin of the card - works pretty slick.
Speeds are just as fast as if I plug in the old hard wired Linksys card (cable ISP)and about 3X as fast as the old 802.11B WAP I just removed. Seems to get much better signal as well (was getting 37% at 100 feet now 97% at same distance).
WEP security was pretty tricky - direct typed in the hexidecimal instead of using the passphrase generator (shudda worked?)
The bonus is I can take this on the road and still connect to "B" airport/hotel/starbucks WAP's.
I'm excited that I upgraded, my wireledd laptop is just as fast as my desktop and fileserver.

Rich in California

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent
Review: I tested the Linksys G series card for my laptop and let me tell you- the speeds are phenominal. It has the same great speed as 802.11a, but with a far greater range(speeds vary on where you are). I was two floors up from the router and it worked like a miracle. Better yet, this can work with 802.11b so if someplace is still not up to this new standard(that may take over 11b) it will still work. I recommend to anyone to get this card if you have a laptop.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Linksys does it again
Review: Another great product from Linksys. I had this card installed, and on my Wireless Access Point, in under five minutes including WEP setup. The range is great, beats all of the old cards I was using. I can't wait for my new Linksys G Wireless Access Point for increased speed.


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