Netgear MA111 802.11b Wireless USB Adapter

Rating:
Summary: What a piece of junk!
Review: Man oh man, what a pain in the rear this thing is! Just bought a new Netgear wireless router and this thing for my house. After inserting it into either my laptop or desktop the connection drops and the light goes out. I remove the device and then reinsert it and it dies even faster than before. Tech support for Netgear (somewhere in India) has absolutely no idea what's going on with it. They thought it I needed to enable broadcasting of my SSID. That didn't work (I knew it wouldn't) so tried getting some answers via email. Again, no luck. Finally decided to return it.

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Summary: Tiny, elegant, simple to install
Review: This little wireless adapter installed easily on my Windows ME notebook (no small feat, as practically nothing else installs simply on WinME machines). The installation instructions said I would have to change some setting during install, but it autosensed everything and I was up and running in less than 10 min. Excellent signal from basement to second floor Linksys WAP (about 20 vertical feet, two floors). My only minor issue is that the adapter sticks out in a rather precarious location from the back of the notebook. Could easily be damaged if you pick up the notebook carelessly or move around alot. In that case, a PC card adapter may make more sense for your applications.

Rating:
Summary: Works great!
Review: I can go across the house, in the garage, or even outside and I still don't lose my connection with the Netgear MA111. Very small and works great with my laptop. Works as good as any other wireless adapter I've tried but this one's smaller. Good product!

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Summary: Version 2.0 driver is the key to success
Review: After reading several reviews on this site I purchased this adapter at Circuit City. I went directly to the Netgear website and downloaded the 2.0 driver, installed it, and plugged it in with no problems whatsoever. It has worked flawlessly, although I would like to see more of a range, but that could be the router or a million other factors involved. I am very satisfied.

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Summary: Plug in and Follow the directions - Tivo Connection
Review: I was hesitant in buying this product seeing some of the other reviews but I felt I could handle it. Let me tell you I just plugged it in, followed the directions provided by Tivo for setup and I was up and running in 5 minutes. It pays to read directions!

Rating:
Summary: Great but slow
Review: great item, ez to install, no problems. its incredibly slow if you are transferring large files. go with the 802.11g instead.

Rating:
Summary: Terrible. Terrible.
Review: I purchased the MA111 v1 brand new. It didn't work. I tried troubleshooting and downloading the new drivers. It still didn't work.
I tried contacting NetGear "24/7" customer service but the line was always busy. When I finally got through they weren't much help.
My advice, avoid this headache and go with another brand.

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Summary: Don't buy MA111 for your TiVo!
Review: After months of trying and searching TiVo forums, this MA111 adapter does NOT work with TiVo (series 2)! The MA111 box even came with TiVo logo sticker on it, the tivo.com website said it was compatible but still doesn't work. Maybe mine is defective but many others have had similar problems.

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Summary: Use latest driver for windows xp sp2
Review: There are two version, V1 & V2. V1 had problems with XP SP2 but the latest driver solves this problem. V2 works fine with XP SP2. In both cases, you MUST install the driver BEFORE plugging in the card! This is very important! If you do that the card works flawlessly.

The range is superb. Better than my Netgear MA401 which is a PCMCIA card. The MA111 works from 4 floors up in my apartment building, which is an amazing range. I am truly impressed.

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Summary: Newer MA111 (MA111v2) does not work on macs
Review: Several reviewers and an amazon "So you'd like to..." list have suggested that the MA111 USB wireless adapter will work with macs running osX. This is not entirely correct. The original MA111 should work. However, the MA111v2 uses a different chip than the old MA111v1. The DWL-122 prism2/3 driver will not work with this adapter, and there is no mac version of the driver for the chip (SiS 162) used in the new ones. At least, that seems to be the result of three days of frustration, searching, hacking drivers and editing plists. :( (I ordered a set of MA111s. Amazon shipped me MA111v2 adapters. Up until I tried to plug-n-play and the adaptor plug-n-failed, I didn't know the MA111 came in different versions. You can't tell from this page.) There is a linux driver that should work for the MA111v2, but some people are reporting bad luck compiling it.