Wireless-Network Reviews

This is definitely the better 802.11a/b combocard I found. Before buying this one, I had bought a Dlink combo and a Netgear combo. Both sucked big time with the Dlink being the worse. I then decided to try the Orinoco based on the reputation of the 802.11b model. Well, it works flawlessly. It's expensive but well worth the price, in my opinion and experience.

Great camera for price. I bought the optional accessory kit model IK-WBACC1 so I could install the camera outdoors. I have the camera running on the 802.11b wireless network and was amazed at how easy it is to install. This is a great camera for home or business.

I wanted to get a camera for the house that I could check while on the road travelling for work. The Toshiba camera featured a low light level so I can type in my camera webpage address and see the front of the house at night in lower light levels. The camera works wirelessly from my linksys wireless B/G router. All I needed to do was plug the camera into power outlet which was in the garage. The power cord is 30+ feet. I found Toshiba updated the temperature specs so it can be used in -4 to 122F temperatures. It was easy to install and the picture quality is great at 1.45 megapixels. The camera also has a rugged housing unlike most cameras priced at the same level.

I highly recommend using this product with a NetGear Access Point or NetGear firewall combo-device like the FWAG114. The only caveat is the signal was sometimes surprisingly low in a small area, but as it constantly polls different frequencies, it improves over time.

It's difficult, if not impossible, these days to find a pci based wireless card that handles all three bandwidths a/b/g with adequate power and an external antenna connector so you can extend the range of your card significantly. The FCC has a mess of regulations regarding the 5 gig band and the addition of transmit and receive sensitivity, whether by adding your own external attenna or raw power output of the card, is strictly regulated. On the surface it might look like this card falls lock step to the FCC code as it comes with a netgear shield over it and a seemingly fixed wire that runs out to the end of a 2.5 inch fixed dipole.

But on closer inspection you only need to pop off the shield with some needlenose pliers (taking into account the voidance of the warranty of course) to discover the hidden mcx connector that you can detach the stock antenna and add your own mcx pigtail of your choice. There's even a nice little solder block to allow you to solder your own pigtail onto and opening for the connector on the card. The b/g radio can crank to 98mW and 11a up to 50mW of power. There are only a handful of PCI tri mode cards, and this is one of the only that have the power requirements and external antenna requirement I wanted without having to soder my own straight onto the pcb.

The guy who said "Not comaptible with dynamic IP address modems" is wrong. I spoke with a tech who told me that it will work fine as long as you disable the DHCP on it's setup page.

I am a bit of a newbie to the world of wireless networking, and this is my first wireless access point.

One thing that I think needs to be mentioned is that this access point makes an audible, very rapid clicking noise. I would guess this would completely insignificant to most users, but my current project involves building a silent, fanless PC, and this access point is curiously... loud. Maybe they're all that way, I don't know.

Another reviewer mentioned that this access point needs to be configured with Windows. This is partly true. If you have a UNIX-based computer (including, I imagine, Mac OS X), there is an open source, free, console-based access point configuration utility availabe - do some searching on google. It's certainly harder to use than Belkin's Windows software, but it does work with this Belkin AP.

I bought this and set it up yesterday. It was a total breeze--just plugged it into my router, put the PC card in my laptop, installed the drivers on the laptop, and everything worked. Very nice. Encryption works fine, too. I would recommend this to anyone who has a wired network and wants to add wireless access to it.

After doing much research, I've decided to go with Microsoft Wireless notebook kit mainly because I am running XP both on my laptop and my PC and I didn't want to experience too much compatibility issues. I had experienced problem when setting up my base station with the PC (couldn't detect internet connection), a quick phone call to Miscrosoft's 24 HOURS support at 12 midnight fixed the problem. Turns out that all I had to do was to unplug power cord of my modem and the base station for 5 mins and VIOLA!! everything runs perfectly!!

Setting up the adapter on my laptop only took me 5 mins. No configuration needed, hardware detects base station right away!!

I would recommend this product to everyone who's thinking about setting up wireless and wired lan!! Great product with reasonable price and best of all you get 2 years worth of 24 HOURS customer support from good old Gates! Can't complain with all this.

P.S. Yes!! You do need to download the patch from the support website.

After doing much research, I've decided to go with Microsoft Wireless notebook kit mainly because I am running XP both on my laptop and my PC and I didn't want to experience too much compatibility issues. I had experienced problem when setting up my base station with the PC (couldn't detect internet connection), a quick phone call to Miscrosoft's 24 HOURS support at 12 midnight fixed the problem. Turns out that all I had to do was to unplug power cord of my modem and the base station for 5 mins and VIOLA!! everything runs perfectly!!

Setting up the adapter on my laptop only took me 5 mins. No configuration needed, hardware detects base station right away!!

I would recommend this product to everyone who's thinking about setting up wireless and wired lan!! Great product with reasonable price and best of all you get 2 years worth of 24 HOURS customer support from good old Gates! Can't complain with all this.

P.S. Yes! You do need to download the patch from the support website.

Here in Pakistan, technology is just coming up. Networking is common but wireless networking is just round the corner. Brand new D-Link/Linksys equipment is available but quite expensive. An Access Point/Router with a laptop PCMCIA card (802.11b) costs about $160 here. So purchasing this Microsoft kit for only $39.88 was peanuts. Setting it up was a breeze! And in no time I was up and about, surfing the web (broadband connection) on my Acer laptop. I was in a state of ecstasy, roaming in different parts of my home with my laptop and browsing the web. I heard about it but experiencing for the first time myself was a feeling out of this world. NO WIRES OR CABLES but full web access everywhere!!!
Nobody believes me that I have made this wonderful purchase for such a good price.

I have bought this router together with 3coms 11g wireless card (3crwe154g72). The combo is great as long as you use WEP or non encrypted.

When ever I use WPA, the connection establishes, works for an hour or so and then drops for 5-10 minutes. I need to reassociate with the router again. Sometimes I need to pull out the card and even (rarely) restart the router.

This WPA problem may be related to the router (supports WPA), the card (supports WPA ONLY trough the OS), or the OS-drivers them selfs (Win XP PRO). However it seems, that some products do not have this issue under Win XP, so this indicates that the problem is either the router or the card.

When the WPA issue will be resolved by for instance a firmware upgrade, I will give this product 5 stars.

Please note: alla the newest (6 april 2004) relevant updates for Win XP, the newest drivers for the card and the newest firwares updates for the router was installed!

BUY ONE WHILE YOU CAN FOLKS! Anyway, (3CRWE554G72) it comes with a Lifetime Warranty + WorldWide service support.

When you buy products from the best like, 3COM, Apple, or 2WIRE (Homeportal 1000W, or 1800HG) then you'll be safe from the rest! (until the next coming up 802.11i generation)

It was literally as easy as plugging the thing in, putting it high on my desk in my office, and attaching the (included) network cable from the cable modem.

Worst signal strength even upstairs was 54% (Good), which was just as fast as sitting in my office (84% - Excellent).

No software installation was involved. I connected to the IP address specified, through my old network setup... I probably could have just plugged in the USB from the cable modem, no network required. There was a 10 page web-wizard to 'Next' thru... I left all the default values.

10 minutes later, I had my 3com 802.11g wireless PC card plugged in, and was tasting my first wireless experience.

I've used it all weekend, over a dozen hours, at all hours, in all the rooms of my house, and the setup has been 100% reliable.

I've used 3com products for the last 7 years, and they've earned another 7 from me. I rarely give 5 stars, but no doubt here. (P.S. Check the 3com site for rebates - I got back an extra fifty bucks by buying my PC card at the same time)

I put this PCI card into my 900mhz AMD Atholon 256mb, and it crashed windows on its very first try. After spending 4 hours reinstalling windows xp it would crash and restart my computer every time.
The product worked ok on my Dell Pentium IV 2.4ghz. Still I'd rather use a wired rather than wireless because the connection isn't very stable. I did keep the Netgearrouter WGT624, for my laptop which works pretty good, maybe because it's a pentium wireless card in there. But for the near futures I'll keep 3 of my desktops wired.
Don't get this unless you absollutely have to.

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I installed the NETGEAR WG3111T 108 mbps Wireless PCI Adapter while still utilizing my Microsoft MN-500, 11 mbps router. I find it easier to resolve any issues by taking things one step at a time. After the adapter card is operating correctly, I will then install the new NETGEAR WGT624 108 mbps router. I have Windows XP Home edition.

First word of advice, for this or any other piece of hardware: Go to the NETGEAR website (www.netgear.com) and check out the support area, and see if there is a newer version of the device driver and the utility software. If at all possible, download and install those BEFORE you install the WG3111T. It would have saved me a lot of time if I had done this myself.

Installation started smoothly. The Smart Configuration Utility setup the new network connection easily even while my old MSN-510 adapter was connected and operating. The utility listed my available network. I selected it and entered my encryption key. All I had to do was disconnect the old adapter and the NETGEAR WG3111T was up and going.

Then I restarted my computer... and I began losing connectivity. When McAfee VirusScan was installing, it would get "synchronization errors" and "VSMain errors". When AOL started up the network would lose connectivity and the IP address was getting changed to 169.254.120.96 or other variations of 169.254. The IP address was also getting changed when I uninstalled CyberSitter. If I ran the Smart Configuration Utility and hit APPLY, then everything would be fine until I restarted AOL. After going to the NETGEAR website and checking out the support area, I found a newer version of the device driver and the utility software. After downloading and installing these, everything is going just fine.

Since the antenna sticks out of the card, I was a little concerned about reception but the signal strength turned out to be a little better than with my Microsoft MN-510, 11mbs Wireless USB Adapter. I do have to remember to fold the antenna in before I move the computer around since I get the best reception by sticking the antenna straight out. (The computer is on third floor and router is in my basement ceiling.) The instructions tell you to point the antenna up.

After I installed the NETGEAR WGT624 108 mbps router, the WG3111T found the new network and was operating without any effort on my part. When the router broadcast channel was changed, the WG3111T picked-up the change automatically. The reception is consistently in the "excellent" range (and runs at 108 mbps), but it does drop to "very good" (and 54 mbps) briefly. Your reception will be based on the location of your router and receivers.

This card went in without any problems, setup was simple enough anyone could do it. I'm using mine with the WGT634U, which will have an external hard drive connected to it next. What more could you ask for? A fast setup, fast secure connection, and no operating problems, superior range, and a quality name brand.

I recently upgraded my internet connection from a regular 56K modem to Verizon's DSL service, and wanted to share my new connection with my secondary computer in a bedroom. I looked at several different options including running wires through the attic, but the resounding choice was to go wireless.

I have had over 6+ years dealing with computer hardware and software, but networking I have never had real formal experience dealing with, so I was a bit ansy when it came to purchasing and setting up my first wireless network. The wireless hardware market is relatively consolidated between Linksys, Netgear, DLink, and to a smaller extent, Microsoft. I chose to go with MN-500 over the others because of my excellent previous experience with other Microsoft hardware.

I purchased it, got home, opened the box - was surprised that the router could stand up or lay flat on it's side - a great feature. Came with all necessary cables and great instructions. Hooking up cables and driver installation was a breeze on Win98. Then it came to setting up my wireless information: my SSID, base station password, channel, WEP key, and some other information. Having not worked with wireless before, it was very intuitive. Got everything correct, then went through the painful process of setting up my wireless USB adapters. Had to reboot the MN-500 once in order to get the USB adapters to recognize the network, but after doing so it worked perfectly.

The MN-500 configuration page shows what computers are hooked up to your network, and the management page has all the usual options: WEP, NAT Firewall, Mac and Client Filtering, LAN and WAN setup, and logging. Very easy to use.

In terms of performance - the MN-500 has been reviewed by many major sites and has been called the slowest in terms of performance of any wireless router. I don't transfer files often between computers so that is not much of an issue. The speed it does transfer files at is more than adequate. In terms of download speed over the internet, the speed is the same on the wireless computers as it is on the wired computer.

The base station itself - features 4 ports for wired access, and status indicator lights showing if the router is having problems, what port is using the network, and so forth. The MN-500 automatically assigns DHCP IP Addresses, so there's no need to manually do it unless you enjoy the challenge. Also, the MN-500 is XBox Live! and XBConnect compatible, so getting your XBox online is as simple as plugging it into the router.

My only gripes about the router: you cannot turn off auto broadcast. That might be a security concern to some, especially if you live in an apartment. (My router is next to a window so I'm kind of concerned) My other gripe: this might be wishful thinking, but you should not be able to lock yourself out of the router through mac filtering, which unfortunately, is possible with this router. (Easily avoided by doing a hard reset on the router)

Overall however, this router is great for the newbie wireless user or even the advanced. It's a great piece of hardware that's easy and simple to use and I'd recommend it to anyone.

I recently bought a new IBM Centrino powered laptop (R40) and wanted a wireless broadband connection for my home. After reading all the reviews on the $50 - $75 routers I picked the Microsoft MN-500 based on customer service. After installing the software I was unable to connect to the internet. My computer recognized the wireless connection but could not connect to the internet. I had a 10 minute wait in primetime to talk to a customer service rep at Microsoft. Within 15 minutes I was running full throttle throughout my small condo. Full signal, regardless of where I went. Needless to say I am very happy with my purchase. And you get a 2 year warranty. I hope Microsoft keeps the customer service in this country. I will avoid offshore customer service companies. And no, I am not in the tech business. My limited experience with offshore customer service has been very negative. You could give me a wireless router and if they have poor customer support I would give it back to you. You get what you pay for!

I bought this router from Amazon based on the reviews I've read after my Netgear router pooped out after about a week and a half. The router couldn't be easier to set up. My whole wireless network was up in about 10 minutes. After I had it up and running, it informed me of a software and firmware update, which was extremely painless, and it was worked flawlessly since. Has good security features. I actually liked the Netgear web-interface better for stuff like MAC address filtering, but this one works too. 2 Thumbs up!

I had Netgear WT511 card, it worked well in the house but not far from outside the house. Then I read a lot about SMC high power card and bought one, you know what I cannot connect even from within house. Then I checked the signal intensity, Netgear has 50% but SMC only has only 30%. What a terrible card!!!

I bought this card to use with a CompUSA brand wireless router on my home network. Both computers on the network are using WinXP Home Edition.

I've tried Netgear, a lesser SMC card, and Trendware wireless cards with my Sony PCG-FX290 laptop (1GHz,256MB,40GB) and while they all worked, they were very inconsistant in their signal strength and worked only in select areas of my home. THIS CARD WORKS OUTSIDE MY HOUSE!!

Install the drivers first, reboot with the card in the PCMCIA slot. The signal strength may be non-existant until you double click on the signal icon and check the status and configuration. I clicked 'RESTORE DEFAULTS' and rebooted my machine... now it's up and running. About a 10 minute or less setup, strong signal and XP recognized it just fine. XP may ask you during installation if you want to use 'unathorized or unverified' certificates... say OK... and move on.

So far... so good. Don't hesitate to buy this card if you want easy setup with an excellent signal right out of the box.

I've had a wireless network for over a year but the signal strength of my connection has always been poor once I get very far from my router so I thought I'd try this card.

It's great.

I did have some initial problems with it and my router despite following all the directions in their manual. I called SMC's technical support line though and got great help.

Turns out that with my Windows XP SP 1 system, despite directions and suggestions to the contrary, the High Power Utility software that comes with the card caused problems. On my system. While I could see that I had a strong connection between the card and the router the card could not reliably get an IP address back from the router. After uninstalling everything - the utility and driver, and then just installing the driver - no High Power Utility - my Internet connection started working! Reliably.

I can go all over our house and yard and get a good strong signal. It's amazing.

The card works and the support I got from SMC, while I wish I had not needed it, was wonderful.

5 stars!