My main interests are in technology. I always seem to have things before other people! I love photog...
My main interests are in technology. I always seem to have things before other people! I love photography and movies. I have my digital camera everywhere I go and I've been involved in shooting short films over the past two years.
Member since:10.05.2006
Reviews:18
I was asked by a family member to kit out their house with wireless functionality. I bought a D-Link router and two of these PCMCIA cards for the kids laptops. Wireless networks are not exactly easy to sort out in the first place, mainly due to different manufacturers having their own ways of setting things up, but this was a nightmare!
We did exactly as the manual told us to, and they didn't work. We took off all forms of encryption and reset the wireless router back to complete factory defaults. These cards would just not recognise the router at all. Evenually after hours of uninstalling, re-installing and resetting things we managed to get one laptop to work with it. This laptop, running Windows XP, now runs okay. However, every now and then when the laptop is reset or turned on after a long time being off, it doesn't recognise the card and says there is no wireless cards attached and no wireless networks within range. Give the laptop a reset and voila, it is fine again. Frustrating. The other laptop is running Windows98SE and that took days to sort out. This laptop also suffers the above problem of saying there are no networks when there is.
When they do work they have a good range. I took the laptop downstairs and into all the different parts of the house and didn't lose any signal strength at all. I wandered out into the garden and even across one field and over to a barn on the other side (120 feet away) and although the bars had dropped to one or two, the internet and streaming video was fine.
I also like the fact they have made a PCMCIA version, it frees up the USB ports for other things such as printers, webcams, memory sticks, etc.
The fact that we spent so long trying to get this wireless network to work, and the fact that the cards sometimes don't even work at all, I have to say I don't recommend these cards. They are problematic and flakey.
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my wirless was a nightmare to get working and the instructions you are often given are useless at best ! ;-)
trevorbrock 14.05.2006 01:24
I have a Belkin one which has worked fine from the start - but it is difficult to get wireless links working first time, esp with all the proper antivirus, firewall etc in operation.-T
May 14th, 2006
helpful by (88%):
somewhat helpful by (13%):
