Rating: 
Summary: my netgear loyalty is waning..
Review: I've always used netgear, and I've never had any manjor problems with it (just some vendor interoperability issues), so I got his as an upgrade to my netgear 802.11b router [...]
Plugged it in, and the setup wizard failed, could not get it to connect. Called netgear support for assistance, and after an hour of trying random stuff, they tell me my cable modem is not caompatible with their router (what??!!). They tell me to put a hub in between the two and it'll work. Luckily I have a hub lying around, so I try it and it works. Very unnecessary though.
I'm online now and the included laptop NIC works fine without problems, but my roommate cannot connect to the router. He has a different vendor card (airlink I think), and it can connect to other couters, but not mine. So he has to go out and buy a netgear card, which works. I also try my Linksys game ethernet bridge which I get setup correctly, but it constantly needs to be reset after transferring < 1 gig of traffic. Some of these issues might be the devices and not the router, but I doubt it. Why do we have such vendor interoperability issues with this router?
As an aside, I got this to get my tivo to run at 802.11g speeds, but I recently discover that I could have accomplished this better instead with two linksys WGR54g routers and new firmware from sveasoft that allows them to operate in bridge mode.
In conclusion:
Rough setup and vendor interoperability issues similar to the ones I've had with previous netgear devices make me think that I'm going to go linksys from now on.
Rating: 
Summary: easy setup, works fast & well, but one problem
Review: just bought this router/pc card combo yesterday during a black friday special for super cheap after rebate. i've been meaning to get one for a long time, but my thinkpad has built in a/b and i didn't want to spend a lot of moolah to replace the built in with a card sticking out of the side of my laptop. most uncool.
but for that price i couldn't not buy one.
brought it home, unplugged my old netgear mr814 and plugged this one in exactly the same way. connected, went through the easy configuration, and voila, working perfectly.
or so i thought.
my vonage internet phone service box is a motorola vt100. i originally had it hooked up after the router, as a connected device. this configuration did not work at all with the new netgear router in this package. the motorola vt100 voice terminal could not receive an ip address via dhcp to this router, and did not appear as a connected device. other various problems persisted with the whole setup, resulting in many full hardware resets, unplugging cable modems, devices, etc, and a few hours (at least 3) spent messing around with the whole setup.
problem solved when i hooked up the vt100 vonage internet phone in front of the router and had it pass through to the router. but this isn't the configuration i wanted. works though, and i'm gonna live with it unless some upgrade comes out to fix it.
thats why the 4 stars instead of 5. everthing else is perfect. no problems with the pcmcia card at all (the new downloadable beta version of the windows xp driver works perfectly, i didn't even bother with the one on the cdrom.)
good luck! - n
Rating:
Summary: Simple to use and hookup
Review: Let me say that I know absolutely nothing about home networking. I had dial-up for so many years because it wasn't available in my area (and I live in Silicon Valley!). When our cable company started to carry it, we signed up immediately.I found the Netgear router and card to be very easy and simple to use. I just plugged the router in, followed the instructions and off I went. The card was just as easy to set up. My desktop is running Windows XP and the laptop has Win98. The only problem I had was running the "test" button after logging into the router's setup page. After inputing the router's settings on the setup page, you're supposed to hit a "test" button to see if you're router is setup correctly. It takes you to a Netgear web page where is says you're successful and you're now protected. For me, the success web page would never appear. After surfing the Netgear web site (and several tech support articles), you have to disable any popup blockers you have. When I did that, the success page finally appeared. For research, I went to www.practicallywired.com where there's a lot of good, basic info for newbies like me. Good luck!
Rating: 
Summary: Did not work with IBM ThinkPad and Windows XP.
Review: The following is a recount of my personal experience with this Netgear product as well as my own opinions about the products usefulness. My background: I am a computer programmer with about 10 years of work experience and a 4.0 grade point average from an Ivy League school. I was not able to get this product to work with an IBM ThinkPad T22 running Windows XP. I got the infamous "Code 10" problem that many others are seeing with this product. (...)a google search for 'netgear wg511 "code 10"' to see more. Besides the problems that users are having, the technical support requires that you traverse "Bangalore Hell", from which you will probably not receive the information necessary to fix the problem (which, from the above posts, seems to be a driver software problem). I tried various versions of the drive software downloaded from Netgear, including the latest 2.7.0.0 driver. This was the latest software available as of July 17, 2004. I was never able to get my laptop to properly recognize the card. No combination of removing and reinstalling drivers, removing and reinserting the wireless card, or clearing out Windows registry keys helped. There is a reference to this problem on the Netgear website. However, it is terse and does not seem to offer a solution -- none of the approaches listed helped solve my problem (...)personal "solution" to the "Code 10" issue was to pack up the Netgear router and card and return it to Amazon. I have since replaced it with a Linksys combination which worked right out of the box. I didn't even need to install software -- Windows XP's built in Wi-Fi support was all that was needed. Please note that this is only my personal experience and the experiences of various other anonymous posters on the Internet. It may not reflect every user's experience (or even the most common experience), and must be taken with a grain of salt. Thanks for reading all the way through! :-) --(...)
Rating:
Summary: Terrible
Review: The wireless router was dead on arrival and the wireless card broke 2 months later. Don't buy this product!
I replaced it with and Apple Aiport Extreme base station (it works on PC's too!)
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.
Rating:
Summary: Good AP router and PC card client, terrific value
Review: This kit includes the two things you need to set up a wi-fi network: a wireless (access point) router, and a PC Card adapter for laptops. (This is a Type II PC Card. Almost all modern laptops are equipped with a Type II PC Card slot.)
Both the router and the PC Card are quite easy to set up, although some networking knowledge will help, because the set-up wizard may fail on occasions. Once set up, things are also pretty easy to configure, but there may be some nagging issues that are user-dependent. For example, on the router side, some of your Internet apps that use exotic ports may stop functioning unless you open up those ports in router configuration. Also, setting up wi-fi security is more pain than necessary. On the PC Card side, the connection utility is not very user-friendly.
Both products deserve four stars for being reliable and durable. I have never experienced a crash with the PC Card which I share among several laptops (running Windows 2000 or Windows XP). If Netgear had put in more thought in the user interface design, this would easily have been a five-star product.
Rating:
Summary: Easy setup, Great Performance, Cool Deal
Review: This piece of equipment is a piece of pleasure. Took me a total of 15 minutes to set up the router and install the card on my laptop.
The 802.11g range is much more better than the 802.11b, Speed is amazing, Nice Security features. Definitely recommended A+++.
|
