Cisco-Linksys WPC54G Wireless-G Notebook Adapter
by Linksys
|
List Price: Our Price: $9.95 You Save: $48.04 (83%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Category: CE See more product details |
|---|
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Cisco-Linksys WPC54G Wireless-G Notebook Adapter
Customer Review: Happy w/ Wireless Router -- Unhappy w/ Support & Manual
Summary: 4 Stars
Setup of Wireless Router & Wireless Adapter Card took 4 long evenings. Installed on Dell laptop running W2K Pro. Technical support was generally poor. Experienced very long wait time on hold only to have call dropped. Same result on second call. Irate tech support staff member disconnected me! Got better support from Verizon DSL supplier vs. Linksys tech support line. Over 6 or so calls to Linksys support, often could not understand their instructions (they're evidently located somewhere far outside US and have3 trouble with the language). Initial install resulted in "Continuous Blue Screen Rebooting of laptop" (not a fun thing. Took about 30 hours and 20 or so calls to tech support, to resolve. Once installed, wireless Linksys system is running very well. Once first laptop was set up, second install and setup on laptop with Win XP was a breeze. Net, net: very happy with hardware but unhappy with poor tech support and hard to follow manual.p.s. Feel "blue screen continuous reboot" issue on W2K Pro likely a software issue that may not exist on XP. Be sure to follow instructions for W2K very, very carefully.
Customer Review: Good enough for the brave early adopter
Summary: 4 Stars
This product uses the same Broadcom draft-802.11g chipset that Belkin, Buffalo and Apple currently use. As expected for a bleeding edge product, the supplied driver is currently not "signed" for XP and hasn't passed WHQL... but it seems to be stable enough and hasn't caused any crashes in my testing.802.11b compatiblity has been fine. It has talked to all the wireless hubs I have been close to with expected 802.11b performance.
For draft-802.11g (via the Linksys WRT54G), the average download speed from ~30 ft. away is ~18Mbps, while the upload speed is ~22Mbps. Performance does bounce around more than it should. I really don't quite understand why the upload speed is always faster; it should be about the same. WEP security does not decrease the performance, which is nice. Overall, it's a lot faster than 802.11b, which never really exceeds 5Mbps either direction. It would have been great if we could get 27Mbps transfers. Oh, well. Let's hope Broadcom and Linksys do a great job between now and when 802.11g is really a standard. And let's hope interoperability between vendors stays a priority.
Customer Review: Major disappointment from a once-sterling vendor
Summary: 2 Stars
LinkSys has been my NIC vendor-of-choice for years now. I could always depend on being able to drop a LinkSys card into my Linux machines and have them "just work". No brains required.This one doesn't. There's absolutely no Linux support at all, and compared to Motorola's corresponding product, the software is very poorly packaged. Both units are Broadcomm-based, which appears to be much of the problem. To get them to work (I'm ASSUMING I'll be able to get the LinkSys card to work, since I did gt the Motorola one running) you have to use ndiswrapper - a shom that allows the Windows drivers to run under Linux. Both my Motorola card and the LinkSys card come with Broadcom software for use under Windows. It's pretty pathetic stuff. However LinkSys wraps the Broadcomm software with stuff that's even more confusing to work with.
Plus, I'm not happy that the last LinkSys NIC I bought died after about 3 weeks. I'm wondering if the Cisco takeover hasn't ruined them.
At any rate, next network interface I buy has a penguin on the box or I don't buy it at all.
Customer Review: Not ready for public use
Summary: 1 Stars
I purchased the WPC54G and spent several hours trying to get it to work by:- downloading drivers
- speaking with tech support
- trolling online for other reports
- installing/rebooting/uninstalling/repeating
I tried the card on my Thinkpad R32 and Thinkpad X20 both running windows 2000. The R32 uses the TI cardbus chipset, and the X20 uses the Ricoh. In both cases, the card drivers freeze the laptop completely, both the standard driver and the "beta" TI version.
Linksys finally acknowledged that the card doesn't really work very well and I should return it to where I purchased it and get a different model. On 2 out of 3 calls to tech support I was promised that a newer, better driver would be mailed to me, but never was.
I've been working with computers for over 20 years, I've owned several dozen in my time, and I know what I'm talking about when I say this product is not ready for commercial release.
Unbelievably shoddy, and unacceptable. Linksys should be punished in the marketplace.
Don't waste your dollars on this...
Customer Review: Beware of versions if want WPA-PSK + AES (vs TKIP)
Summary: 5 Stars
Good product, but note that there are 3 versions out there: no version (the original - "v0"), v2, and v4 (bundled w/ a wireless router). Don't know about the card in v4, but if you want WPA-PSK and AES (vs TKIP), then don't get v2. The WLAN Monitor program in v2 does NOT offer AES (tested and confirmed today by Linky Tech Support) for either W2000 or WXP. This is NOT (as Linksys wants to say) an MS problem - Linky's v2 driver is not ready to "offer" AES, just TKIP, as of 1/20/05. The v0 (original) card works in both OS's, providing you dl the latest drvr from Linky's website. I'm writng this 'cuz I just paid a LOT of dues trying to get the v2 to work in either of my laptops. Only v0 works >> AES. Made several calls to Linky cust support, and finally a Level 2 tech fessed up and admitted it -- not a consumer-friendly attitude. The v2 spec sheet flaunts WPA, AES, TKIP capability, but it's BS. Am now trying to locate another v0 card to complete my layout. Last note: no one seems to indicate on their website which version they're selling, so good luck!!