Rating: 
Summary: Works great
Review: - Installation was a no-brainer on Window 2000 and XP machines. Within 5 minutes everything was up and running with my DSL. Also using a Microsoft wireless base simplied the installation/integration task, too. But I gave up on a laptop that uses Win98. I tried it myself three times, and with the help of customer support once. It was a definite no-go. Perhaps my Win98 laptop is a bit old and does not have enough RAM. It messed up the OS that I ended up reloading the it on my laptop. - Its range is very adequate.
- The utility software that came with the adapter is as straight forward as software can be, no complain here.
Rating: 
Summary: Much better than Linksys
Review: After hours of frustration with a Linksys card, I gave up and bought the Microsoft adapter. It's wonderful! My OS is Windows ME, which caused endless software compatibility problems with the Linksys WPC11 ver. 4. Linksys suggested there was something seriously wrong with my OS, but the Microsoft adapter was up and running within 15 minutes of opening the box. I was skeptical of Microsoft hardware, but was pleasantly surprised by the ease of operation and also liked the fact that it comes with a hard copy of the user's guide (Linksys only has their user's guide in pdf on the software installation CD). I haven't had the Microsoft adapter long, but am very pleased thus far.
Rating:
Summary: Flawless
Review: Excellent product. Setup was an absolute breeze - it better be, given the fact that it's a Microsoft product! I guess there's one good thing about Microsoft-branded hardware. Excellent range. I bought this to replace the subpar, computer-crashing Linksys WPC11. The range is already noticeably better.
Rating: 
Summary: Works perfectly, but software is brain dead
Review: First the good. This device installs on any Windows system from Win 98 through XP, and works perfectly. Now the bad. It does NOT work with any operating system but Wndows 98 through XP. This in itself isn't terrible if you have a Windows PC, but the sad part comes with the software. If you don't have IE already on your system it consumes a whopping 144 MB! Even with IE it takes up 80 MB of space. Compared to the less than 1 MB for any other card I've tried, including SMC and Linksys, this is plain sloppy. Also, while this card will support 128-bit WEP (wireless encryption protocol), that protocol is not as secure as you may be lead to believe, and not all access points support it. Add the massive security problems introduced by IE, which is required, and any protection you do get is negated. That said, if you are using Windows, especially XP and don't care about wasting drive space because of sloppy software development practices, this is a good deal based on price, performance and ease of installation. I gave it low marks because of poor cross platform compatibility, terrible software and the false sense of security implied by the 128-bit WEP feature.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad at all
Review: For a microsoft product I was skeptical, but I was lured by the cheap price. Let me tell you, setup was 5-10 minutes barely looking at the instruction manual, and I'm no computer whiz. The quality is high and the utility software is very good. I would recommend this to anybody with a laptop and a wireless internet connection.
Rating:
Summary: Works great with Linux
Review: I bought this because it is somewhat difficult to find a wireless notebook card that works easily with linux. The chipset they used for these works very well. I have it running on an old IBM thinkpad 570 & it was exceptionally easy to set up under Fedora Core 2. Purchased it as a package with an M$ branded access point & that was very easy to set up as well (you can set it up from just about any OS with the web interface, but I think you would have to have windoze to do any firmware upgrades as they come in .exe file packages). Works well with Windoze too, of course. Access point also works fine with my Mac. And because M$ has decided to drop out of the business you can get these for a song. . .almost tempted to get another card just as a back up!
Rating:
Summary: Works great with Linux!
Review: I bought this card as a cheap back-up for my SMC2532W-B, and am pleasantly able to report that it work like a charm with Debian Linux! (I am using Libranet, a Debian-based distro, with the wlan-ng wireless pcmcia drivers). Who'da thunk that a Microsoft card would be recommended by a Linux Geek? But this is one of the increasingly difficult-to-find pcmcia cards using the prism 2/2.5/3 chipset that works really well in Linux. And while it doesn't have the range of the SMC (one of the highest power out-of-the-box cards you can get) it linked right up as soon as I plugged it into my Thinkpad T21 & gave it's MAC address to my Netgear router (I have MAC access turned on) and seems to get as least as good range as the very similar Netgear MA401 I have also used. I have absolutely no idea how well it works with Windows, I would assume well as it's a Microsoft product. But if you are looking for a budget card for use with Linux, at this price you can't go wrong!
Rating: 
Summary: Utility software is bad
Review: I bought this card to replace my Linksys card. The Linksys hardware is bad. The Microsoft software is a pain to use. It does not have a profile manager like the Linksys or Netgear. Therefore, it is a hassle to switch between the wireless network at home and at work. I cannot find any mention of an easy way to keep the profile settings. Whenever you have to switch to another wireless network, you have to retype the WEP key. And the WEP key is displayed in clear text in the Utilties tool. That's not very smart. After trying to connect to my Cisco Access Point for over an hour, it always get the wrong IP address. I am giving up on the Microsoft WLAN card and will get a Netgear instead.
Rating:
Summary: Fragile, Weak Receiver
Review: I did not have good luck with this PCMCIA adapter. I couldn't get a signal strong enough to even telnet from my office to my living room for my laptop. I had to go work in the bedroom. Then, it died completely. Maybe I just received a bad unit, but it never worked well for me. I am much happier now that I use one of the USB adapters with my laptop. It has much better range and I can move it to another computer easily when I don't need it on my work laptop.
Rating:
Summary: not bad... for six months
Review: I had no problems using this card on a Windows 2000 notebook PC. I only used this PC/NIC card, on average, about 2x/week for about an hour at a time. The NIC card worked great... for 6 months. The card then slowly died over about a month's time. I would recommend against this card.
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