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D-Link DWL-G520 AirPlus Xtreme G Wireless PCI Adapter 108Mbps

D-Link DWL-G520 AirPlus Xtreme G Wireless PCI Adapter 108Mbps

List Price: $89.99
Your Price: $49.39
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Works great for me.
Review: All I had to do was follow the instructions that came with this thing and I was up and running wirelessly in no time. I have this card in my PC and it connects to a DI-624 (router/AP) with a strong signal strength, about 80%, at 2 rooms down the hall from the living room which has the main PC and the DI-624.

The utility that came with this card is a very nice piece of software. It is intuative, good looking, and not too obtrusive.

I'd recommend this card to others since it works great for me.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Superb Little Wireless PCI Card
Review: All I had to do was plug it in (5 mins), install the drivers (2 mins), then configure to work with my network (1 min) and I am up and connected to my network.

It is all easy to do, due to the good documentation, and it works great with the DI-624. Speeds are fast, it's secure, and I don't know what else I can say about it besides it is running with no problems.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: BUYER BEWARE!!!
Review: Bought the DWL-G520 from another internet merchant along with the DI-624. The DI-624 works great, but this PCI card is the worst product I've ever bought. Running on Win2K SP4, it locks up my computer after 5 minutes of use everytime!

After talking to clueless Level 1 Support several times and jumping their hoops (upgrade bios, upgrade sound card drivers, upgrade video card drivers, upgrade chipset drivers, upgrade OS service pack, use newest driver, revert to old driver, move the card to a different PCI slot...), I was finally able to have the card RMA'd.

But the same symptom happened with the replacement card they sent me. In all my years, this is the worst POS I've ever come across and D-Link Level 1 Support is worst and most clueless support technicians I have ever encountered, EVER. Avoid this card if you value your time and money and if you ever need their support, skip to Level 2 support!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Easy and Fast
Review: Easy to install and Fast transfer speeds. I installed this on WinXP and it worked out of the box. I get a pretty good signal strength from about 2 rooms away and I like the D-Link software that comes with it.
I am also glad I didn't have to mess with running cable across 2 rooms of my home just to be on the internet.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Make sure u have the latest revision - read for more info...
Review: First, you must know that D-Link has the annoying and unprofessional habit of releasing unfinished, not so ready hardware to market. It seems that their engineering team is under pressure from marketing (typical) to deliver products before they are completely tested and ready. There are several revisions (internal designs) of this and other D-Link products. As of this writing (April 2004), the DWL-G650 has 7 of them, A1, B1, B2, B3, B4, C1, and C2 each representing a correction to a "Oops" of some sort! The DWL-G520 has 2, A and B, while the DI-624 router has 3, A, B, and C. The latest revision is what you should look for, it is usually on the sticker on the back of the box - just below the serial number.

OK, so I had the DI-614+ router, DWL-650+ PC Card, and DWL-520+ PCI card, and they worked great. I just needed the higher speed to stream music and video from my server upstairs, and wanted to use the more secure WPA protocol (not yet supported on the DWL-520+ *stupid D-Link*), so I upgraded to the DI-624 router (rev. C), DWL-G650 PC Card (rev. B4), and DWL-G520 PCI Card (rev. B). I upgraded the firmware on the router right away to 2.42 and the driver for the G650 to 2.48. The router seemed to work fine, but the card was not seeing it. My older 802.11B card (DWL-650+) was able to see and connect to the new router, but not the new card. I tried many things to no avail. I then installed the older driver 2.42 and the card started seeing the router but had trouble keeping the connection..I played with many settings and nothing helped. I tried two other laptops (different brands) and experienced the same symptoms.
Finally, I went to the a store and purchased another DWL-G650 and made sure it was the newer rev. C2 (the latest). Guess what, it worked right away and kept the connection solid. I tried FTP between the server (wired to the router) and the wireless laptop and got a transfer throughput of about 2400KBytes/sec... This is while using WPA-PSK with Super G enabled and using a short preamble. The same results were obtained with the PCI version of the card (DWL-G520).
I returned the bad PC Card (rev. B4) back to the store and kept the new one! So, just make sure that you have the latest version of the hardware.

One more thing, if you compare the signal quality/strength between DWL-650+ and DWL-G650 or between DWL-520+ and DWL-G520 you'll find that the new cards have a much lower number (worst). For example, my old 650+ used to get around 70% quality compared to 36% for the G650 at the same exact spot/direction. The difference is identical when comparing the 520+ to the G520. I have not experienced any performance issues though, the TxRate is typically at 72Mbps (not 108Mbps)! I think the new AirPlus XtremeG utility calculates the quality number differently and hence the difference, and future driver updates may further enhance the signal measurement.

D-Link's release of faulty hardware is wrong and must be stopped. The problem is that their competition are not much better. So go for what works, and buy from a place that has a good return policy. Someday another vendor will make better products and offer better support, and I will abandon D-Link :)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Easy installation; Fast
Review: I am using this card on a home network with a Netgear Wireless-G access point. On the same wireless network, I have a Linksys Wireless USB Adapter (WUSB54G) and a Netgear PC card (WG511).

Installation and set up of this card was easy. I installed it on a Windows 2000 desktop and the instructions were not very clear for Win2K, but I was able to figure it out without much sweat. Considering that almost everyone has Windows XP these days, this may not be a problem.

The speed and performance is good - as good as it can get. On my network (at the same distance from the access point), this card and the WG511 are equally fast. With my ISP, my download speed is about 1.2mbps and upstream speed is 200kbps. The WUSB54G is pretty slow (must be because it is USB) - I get only < 300 mbps downstream.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Easy to Use, Great Performance
Review: I bought DI-624 router and G-520 PCI last week to replace my existing wired router. The install/configuration is a no-brainer. Last evening, it took me 5 minutes to hook/unhook the routers, maybe 20 minutes to physically install the PCI, and 5 minutes to setup.

Now I have two PCs wired to DI-624 in the first floor, and one wirelessly connected to the DI-624 in the second floor.

The performance is awesome. I tested the Internet speed from all of my PCs, they were all 3.3 mps. File transfers from on PC to another is fast, as a matter of fact, you cannot tell that you have a wireless connection.

I like these products.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Do nut buy this card
Review: I bought this card because I previously got the DI-624 router from costco and thought it would be a good idea getting everything from the same manufacturer. That was wishful thinking.

The card never worked correctly. It installs fine, and the signal is always very strong, but the connection lasts 5 minutes at best. Eventually it will drop and neve reconnect, even though the signal indicator is still at 3 bars.

First I thought it was my old Windows 2000. So I upgraded to XP Pro. Same thing. Then I got a completely new mainboard, CPU, BIOS etc and thought that would do the trick. No avail. Even worse, the new PC started to have spurious hiccups, freezes and jittery games. All this stops when I disable the wireless card.
D-Link tech support is clueless and suggest nonsense such as as 'it could be interference with your cordless phone'. My Dell notebook with a dell wireless card works flawlessly in the entire house. So much to tech support.
Summary: If you want to avoid trouble, buy someting else. Just look at ebay how many 'refurbished' ones are for sale. That tells enough.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Really amazing card
Review: I had this up and running in 5-10 minutes! No issues at all! Just make sure to have the most recent drivers, which are downloadable from the D-Link website, on your computer, cd, or floppy disk before installing, as the CD that comes with the product(though I did not buy it at Amazon) is a bit out of date, and may cause issues.

Wonderful card! Very strong signal from far distances.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: dlink g520 54mbps vs the dlink 22 mbps
Review: i have a dlink airplus 614+ 22 mps router. should i get the dlink g520 with the 54 mbps or get the 22mbps from dlink or it doesnt really matter much? any thoughts thanks. not a really comp expert myself.


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