Rating: 
Summary: Great card - 11Mbps even with "fair" signal strength!
Review: I installed this card on my laptop to work with the Linksys BEFW11S4 Wireless 4-Port Cable/DSL Router. The combo works great! I am now sitting on my deck off the first floor of my house with a Good Signal Strength from my NetGear MA401 802.11b card, connected at 11Mbps with 128-bit WEP excitedly writing this review! Even with "fair" signal strength at various spots around the house, I am getting 11Mbps, and the connection seems fast, subjectively, as well. The Router is on the 2nd floor of my house, so I am separated by several walls, etc.
Rating: 
Summary: Good product
Review: Got a great price on this PC card and decided to give it a try with the Linksys 4-port switch Wireless cable/dsl router. Worked great rite out of the box. Good documentation. Get decent reception with this card between it and the router, distances around 40ft with walls in the way. I have always had good experiences with Netgear products, and this one does not disappoint,
Rating:
Summary: Works well with XP after drivers updated
Review: The card installs quickly and runs well. I only have one complaint. The version 1.3 CD that is included with the product has drivers for Win 95/Win98/ME/2000/NT/Linux.I installed this card in a Win95 PC using the MA301 PCI adapter. This combination works well for the older PC which is about 50 feet away from the ME102 802.11b Access Point. I get 11mbps with 60% link quality and 60% signal strength. However, the card does not come with drivers for XP, a new operating system introduced by Microsoft this September. I recently bought a new VAIO PCG-FXA32 laptop which runs XP, so the product did not completely work out of the box for me. I installed it using the Win2000 drivers and it runs for the most part except the display for the current channel on the link info tab and the PS mode on the configuration panel did not display properly. I am using the ME102 802.11b Access Point and am able to cover my entire 3 story wood frame house with it. I get good coverage in the basement, in my back yard, and in the dining room with 11mbps service and 75%-100% link quality and 75%-100% signal strength being typical. I called Neesus (the manufacturer of the drivers) and reported the problem to them. They sent me the following driver updates to solve the problem: config.exe version 4.6.4.20 and ndcprtns.sys 1.5.0.5 I've reported the solution of this minor problem to Netgear. They should post these new drivers for XP. For fixed PCs which use Win98/WinME/Win2000/WinNT/Linux and have a USB port, I would use the MA101 USB adapter instead because the unit and antennas can be repositioned to optimize reception. I think the Netgear product is easy to install for a wireless home network. It took me less than 10 minutes to install for the Win95 PC and a bit longer with the XP laptop due to the problem I described. I would improve the product with site survey software wich would allow you to pick the best channel to use considering that these systems are getting popular and occupy the same channels as cordless phones and microwave ovens. (...)
Rating: 
Summary: Poor Pre-Sales Support
Review: I planned to buy this product but needed some extra pre-sales info from Netgear (a USB vs. PCMCIA Card recommendation). I contacted their pre-sales
department, which is part of their out-of-USA (overseas) post-sales tech support operation. After waiting 45 minutes in the phone queue on-hold, I was
disconnected. I called again and was told I would have to wait again in the phone queue, which I declined. I instead faxed 3 top corporate officers with my help
request, but never received a callback or other reply. I can only imagine the tech support I might have received if I had a faulty product, or if I need post-sales
support. Based on this unusually poor support experience, I instead purchased n 8-station wireless LAN from Asante, which offers excellent pre-sales support.
Rating:
Summary: Netgear wireless card compatible with SMC broadband router
Review: I have no problem installing the Netgear wireless card driver on my Win2000. I didn't have to install the utility because I was using the same utility as the SMC wireless card that I install earlier. However, you will see the SMC trademark on the utility even thought you are using the Netgear wireless card. .... I have no problem of communicating between my Netgear wireless card and my SMC Networks SMC7004AWBR Wireless 4-Port Broadband Router with Print Server.
Rating:
Summary: Decent wireless card
Review: Netgear offers a decent product at a fair price. In addition to windows drivers, they also offer an open source Linux driver with full source. I have not confirmed this, but I think some of the higher priced cards (Lucent, etc) might have slightly better RF range, but the netgear is certainly decent. This card's antenna is thin enough that you could insert a second PCCard in your other slot; some of the other cards have a thicker antenna that might block other other adapters, so this is a plus for this Netgear card.
Rating:
Summary: Works fine with an operating system that should networked
Review: I have used the card in several different machines (Desktops and laptops) with different operating systems (Win 98, Win ME, and Win 2000). The Win 98 and Win 2000 laptops were no problem and the Win 2000 desktop (with PCI adapter) was fine also. Win Me on the other hand was a complete basket case, as it is with most hardware, software, firmware and even tupperware. The only thing ME is good for is a stand alone PC running games or MP3s. The card was fine in most instances, and I would recommend it for anyone needing a wireless network in an open environment. My only complant is the range drops in a building with a lot of walls
Rating:
Summary: Netgear wireless pc card
Review: Wireless PC Card works great, no issues, not hard on battery power and closest thing to plug and play....with the netgear wireless access point..
Rating:
Summary: Crashes Win ME
Review: 9 out of the 10 times I inserted the card into my brand new Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop it crashes Win ME. I get a blue screen that tells me to hit enter to return to Windows--when I hit enter nothing happens so I have to manually restart my system. To compound my problems, when I go to try uninstalling the Netgear utility software I'm faced with a message telling me I cannot uninstall the software because another program is using it. I have no idea what program is using it since I'm doing this after doing a fresh reboot. It is a great technology when it works the 1 out of 10 times. Transfer rates are good. However, if you plan to download multimedia content expect a large delay in the total amount of data you can download. I was downloading 1 song at a time from [www.....]. Convresely, on my desktop computer that is connected directly to a wireless SMC Barricade router/hub I could download 10 songs at a time. I would not try this product. If it did NOT work for me I have a strong feeling it will not work for you!!
Rating:
Summary: Netgear Equals Superb Service
Review: This holiday season I was a good santa and purchased numerous wireless networking products for my various family members. Sure it was partially a selfish act as I wanted to be able to easily connect when I went to visit, but for the most part it was just an act of giving. I purchased mainly G products and they varied from routers to USB adapters to PC Card adapters. I did also purchase a couple of B products for those in the family that already had some wireless networking products (yes, I know they are backwards compatible but I didn't want to take any chances).
Only two members of the family had installation problems (considering my family is very non-technical I was quite impressed) and those two people both had yet to upgrade to Windows XP SP2. The rest of the family members were up and running within minutes.
As for the couple of family members that did have problems, well they called me first (of course) and I told them to just run back through the installation procedure again. This solved the problem for Uncle Dennis but Grandma Joyce still couldn't get it to work properly. I reluctantly told her to call Netgear's technical support (hey the reviews on Amazon haven't been too pretty for their tech support). I however was quite pleased when an hour later I got an email from Grandma Joyce thanking me for the great gift. I called her back and she told me that after fiddling with the settings with the Netgear people she was up and running within 30 minutes.
Overall, I consider this the ultimate test of product quality and support and I would give Netgear two thumbs up.
I hope this review was helpful to you in putting your mind at ease regarding ease of setup and trust of technical support if needed.
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