Home :: Computers :: Components :: Networking :: Broadband Access  

Broadband Access

Telephony
Wired Networks
Wireless Networks
Netgear FA-310TX 10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet PCI Card

Netgear FA-310TX 10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet PCI Card

List Price: $27.00
Your Price:
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 >>

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great card for SOHO or branch LAN
Review: Since their purchase by Nortel, NetGear has still been producing great products. I've used this card in all three of my PC's, and dozens in the computers of my friends and coworkers due to its ease of use and cost. It lacks any diagnostic tools or interface with the card, but it's well accepted on many platforms. A great card.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Best Home or Office Network Card
Review: The Best Home or Office Network Card for the Price, Under $.... This NIC (Network Interface Card) Have a great performance over others more expensive cards. Its easy to install, have all the Drivers you can need for mayor OS. Great card!!! Great card!!! ATT. Agenor Marrero A+

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: 4.5 stars
Review: The cheapest and best network card on the market. Widely supported for all operating systems. I use this on my linux box currently without a problem. Currently running 2.1.12smp redhat 6.1. Great price for a great card. Did have some problems with the tulip driver on a previous install after recompiling though it seemed to be OK. SOme people complain of documentation.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Versatile not Durable
Review: The Netgear FA-310TX 10/100Mbps Fast Ethernet PCI Card uses the Tulip chipset which is widely supported. Most Operating Systems have a driver which will support this card right out of the box. For that reason it is very effective in computers where you want a low cost solution for systems running non-Microsoft operating systems.

My only fault with the card is that is uses a flash ROM on the board. This ROM chip is very sensitive. Removing the card for any reason often wipes out the data stored on the ROM. Since Netgear has no patch capable of re-flashing the chip this renders the card unusable.

If you do not intend to upgrade your computer, this is a great low cost board. However if you think you will need to open the case for any reason, I reccomend finding a different solution.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Wish I had some more DOCs
Review: The only reason I was able to get it working was because my friend had the same starter kit that I got. The card itself is actually pretty nice, but the manual that comes with it is a joke--if you want to bone up your existing network, this could be a nice cheap card for you, but it's not worth the trouble for beginners.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Serious issues with later revs
Review: These used to be some of the best cards to have, back when they were based on the REAL Digital Tulip chip. However, some years ago the Tulip went out of production and Netgear switched to an _almost_ compatible clone chip.
The LiteOn PNIC chip that the current cards use has a poor reputation (from what I've read) in the development community. I personally have used dozens of these cards over the past two years and have seen almost every manner of failure. We've had cards that can't auto-neg, ones that never seem to work, and worst of all, cards that will work for weeks and then die without warning. From what I've seen, these things never get decent performance, especially with multiple cards in a system.
I have used the FA310TX with Windows 95,98,NT,2k, Linux 2.2-2.4, and Free/OpenBSD. Across every OS and hardware platform I've tried I've seen the same problems, so it's definately not driver or configuration issues.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Serious issues with later revs
Review: These used to be some of the best cards to have, back when they were based on the REAL Digital Tulip chip. However, some years ago the Tulip went out of production and Netgear switched to an _almost_ compatible clone chip.
The LiteOn PNIC chip that the current cards use has a poor reputation (from what I've read) in the development community. I personally have used dozens of these cards over the past two years and have seen almost every manner of failure. We've had cards that can't auto-neg, ones that never seem to work, and worst of all, cards that will work for weeks and then die without warning. From what I've seen, these things never get decent performance, especially with multiple cards in a system.
I have used the FA310TX with Windows 95,98,NT,2k, Linux 2.2-2.4, and Free/OpenBSD. Across every OS and hardware platform I've tried I've seen the same problems, so it's definately not driver or configuration issues.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Died after only 6 months.
Review: This card only lasted 6 months. I tried new drivers with no luck ... Try another brand.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent value for the price
Review: This ethernet card gets the job done. If you are just trying to set up a small network, or perhaps a DSL modem, this card is perfect...It is a very worthwhile addition to any computer. I have not had any problems with it to date, and the installation was very easy.

Rating: 5 stars
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.


<< 1 2 3 4 5 6 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates