Rating: 
Summary: WPC54A Review
Review: I am extremely happy with this product and its corresponding WAP54A wireless access point. I would steer clear of the dual-band as I have heard and seen nothing but bad news on that product.
I have the WPC54A card for multiple laptops at home, one running Windows ME, one running Windows 98SE, and one running Windows 2000.
I have never had a problem and this product is much faster and has a better range that the 2.4GHz products, which I had before the WPC54A and WAP54A came out.
Rating: 
Summary: Windows XP Users Beware
Review: I am quite disappointed with this product. First of all, did anyone mention that "Turbo Mode" doesn't work if you are running Windows XP? The only place where I see this mentioned is in the Troubleshooting section of the Installation Guide. Second, 152-bit WEP encryption is not available. The highest value available from the drop-down is 128 bit. Both of these problems are present even after I updated to the latest driver. To me, this is false advertising. There are many other minor problems as well. The installation guide warns against using the Setup program supplied on the CD-ROM if you are running XP. We supposed to just use Windows XP to search for the driver from the CD. This gives me an impression that the product was not ready and was rushed out of the door. Second, the supposedly more detailed User Guide on the CD-ROM is nothing more than a re-phrase of the Quick Installation Guide. Why bother? Finally, who in their right mind will ship their Access Point with MAC Filtering turned ON? It wasted me an hour to figure out this was the reason why the connection wasn't working. Once you know about all the little problems that I mentioned here, the entire setup should take no more than 10 minutes for a technical person. Instead, it took me almost two hours, and I consider myself very technical. I am giving two stars instead of one because once I finally set it up, it works pretty well througout my small two-story house. I get a reported 54Mbps if the laptop is right next to the Access Point. Other than that, don't even think about 54Mbps. From the next room, I get between 12Mbps and 48Mbps. From a different floor, I get between 6Mbps and 24Mbps. Keep in mind that these are just the reported speeds. The true speeds are roughly half of these numbers, as have been well documented in PC Magazine testing. In any case, I'll take these numbers any days for the benefit of having wireless freedom.
Rating: 
Summary: Unending pain and suffering
Review: I am trying to use this wireless card in a Dell Latitude C810. Big mistake. This card merely causes the system to hard lock up and a reboot is necessary to get it back. Upgrading the BIOS had no effect. Apparently, D-Link is having the same issues with their card based on the same Atheros chipset. I am now stuck with a piece of junk which I can't sell and can't use. Very nice. Atheros, Linksys, D-link....get your stuff together!!!
Rating:
Summary: This card ...... and it's not a Linksys issue....or is it?
Review: I am trying to use this wireless card in a Dell Latitude C810. Big mistake. This card merely causes the system to hard lock up and a reboot is necessary to get it back. Upgrading the BIOS had no effect. Apparently, D-Link is having the same issues with their card based on the same Atheros chipset. I am now stuck with a piece of junk which I can't sell and can't use. Very nice. Atheros, Linksys, D-link....get your stuff together!!!
Rating:
Summary: WPC54A for Christmas :-(
Review: I asked my wife to get me this and the dual-band WAP from Linksys for Christmas. Normally I do my homework and research something before I buy it, in this case I didn't and I got burned. I am seeing a lot of the same problems that have been reported here. I have a Toshiba Satellite running XP. I got the system lockups as well. Updating the driver from the Linksys website (actually a clean install after doing a complete hard restore on the laptop!) seemed to alleviate the lockup problem. Otherwise, the card works fine for a while but eventually stops seeing the WAP (<10'). The behavior is consistent with a temperature problem although once things get hosed, its pretty hard to recover even with things turned off overnight. Swapping slots never really helped. I contacted Lynksys and they are sending me an exchange unit. I didn't spend much time on the phone with tech support before they concluded that I needed to return/exchange it with them. It kind of surprised me at the time that we didn't spend much more time investigating driver versions etc. Now I know why. I also flat out asked him if this was a chronic problem with this card and he apparently lied to me and said "no". We shall see how the replacement unit works. I am not very optimistic. I purchased it through Compusa.com and they have a piddly 14 day return/exchange policy so at this point my fate lies with Linksys. What a disapppointment. BTW, I also purchased an airport card for my iBook and it has not had a single issue working with the Linksys WAP (using 802.11b). Maybe all the Mac crazies aren't that off the mark?
Rating:
Summary: WPC54A for Christmas :-(
Review: I asked my wife to get me this and the dual-band WAP from Linksys for Christmas. Normally I do my homework and research something before I buy it, in this case I didn't and I got burned. I am seeing a lot of the same problems that have been reported here. I have a Toshiba Satellite running XP. I got the system lockups as well. Updating the driver from the Linksys website (actually a clean install after doing a complete hard restore on the laptop!) seemed to alleviate the lockup problem. Otherwise, the card works fine for a while but eventually stops seeing the WAP (<10'). The behavior is consistent with a temperature problem although once things get hosed, its pretty hard to recover even with things turned off overnight. Swapping slots never really helped. I contacted Lynksys and they are sending me an exchange unit. I didn't spend much time on the phone with tech support before they concluded that I needed to return/exchange it with them. It kind of surprised me at the time that we didn't spend much more time investigating driver versions etc. Now I know why. I also flat out asked him if this was a chronic problem with this card and he apparently lied to me and said "no". We shall see how the replacement unit works. I am not very optimistic. I purchased it through Compusa.com and they have a piddly 14 day return/exchange policy so at this point my fate lies with Linksys. What a disapppointment. BTW, I also purchased an airport card for my iBook and it has not had a single issue working with the Linksys WAP (using 802.11b). Maybe all the Mac crazies aren't that off the mark?
Rating:
Summary: Lemon alert!
Review: I bought the WPC54A and Linksys' new dual band WAP51AB Access Point. I've not reached any conclusions on the Dual Band Access Point yet, but the WPC54A is most definitely a dog. I tried it in a Dell Latitude w/ Win2K & in a Toshiba Tecra w/ Win98; the WPC54A stumbled, staggered, farted and fell down in both machines. WPC54A misbehavior occurred when it was on the same table as the Access Point (< 4 feet separation), and when it was separated from the AP at ranges of from 20 to 40 feet. Most irritating was that when the WPC54A "hung" it locked up both of my laptops such that the only way to recover control was to cycle power... this is _extremely_ bad behavior for a driver. I say most irritating because these flaws are so obvious that Linksys' management must have known about them, and decided to shovel these pigs out the door anyway. ...talk about corporate greed! I tried to resolve the problems through Linksys' tech support. While the technicians were courteous, I got no satisfaction from the hour and a half I spent on the phone (45 minutes waiting on the firat tech to answer my call). They indicated that this was a new product, and apparently they had little training or experience with it. In the end they found no problems with the setup and configuration I had when I called. Stay away from this one. I'm rating the WPC54A as one star because there isn't a "zero star" rating.
Rating:
Summary: WPC54A Review
Review: I bought this WPC54A adapter for use with my Linksys WRT51AB access point under Windows XP but was completely unable to get it to work. It always locked up my Gateway Solo 9550 laptop within 10 seconds of plugging it in. I tried the later drivers as per tech support and after that my laptop froze immediately every time upon inserting the card. Tech support suggests that this may be an IRQ conflict, but there is no way to change the IRQ. I returned the card to CompUSA and got a Netgear HA501A card and it worked right out of the box (except turbo mode, apparently it doesn't work well with Windows XP, which by the way, is mentioned nowhere on the box). Bottom line, do your research before you buy and you will see that Linksys has some serious issues to work out with the WPC54A wireless card. Good Luck...
Rating:
Summary: WPC54A Does not work...
Review: I bought this WPC54A adapter for use with my Linksys WRT51AB access point under Windows XP but was completely unable to get it to work. It always locked up my Gateway Solo 9550 laptop within 10 seconds of plugging it in. I tried the later drivers as per tech support and after that my laptop froze immediately every time upon inserting the card. Tech support suggests that this may be an IRQ conflict, but there is no way to change the IRQ. I returned the card to CompUSA and got a Netgear HA501A card and it worked right out of the box (except turbo mode, apparently it doesn't work well with Windows XP, which by the way, is mentioned nowhere on the box). Bottom line, do your research before you buy and you will see that Linksys has some serious issues to work out with the WPC54A wireless card. Good Luck...
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Product
Review: I have to agree with another reviewer; the card seems like a great deal, but it just doesn't work. After several e-mails back and forth with their "technical support" department, they stopped responding. The basic problem is after running for a while, the card will lock the computer forcing you to remove the card to restore the computer. Purchased a DLink DWL-A650 as a replacement and have not had a problem. Linksys will not take the card back for repair or exchange. Most people are having problems with Windows 2000, but my problem was with Windows XP using a Dell Inspiron laptop.
| 
