The D-Link AirPlus DWL-650+ CardBus Adapter is an enhanced 802.11b CardBus featuring advanced silicon chip design from Texas Instruments that utilizes their patented Digital Signal... more
A review by Deru on D-Link Air DWL 650+ April 13th, 2006
Author's product rating:
Speed
Fast
Ease of Installation
Excellent - very quick and easy
Ease of use
Very easy
Reliability
Excellent
Value For Money
Excellent
Advantages:
Easy to set up and use, Stable, Good support
Disadvantages:
A bit out dated
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
The D-Link DWL-G650+ is a PCMCIA wireless (WiFi) card, which plugs into an available PCMCIA slot on a laptop. With this card, it wireless-enables a laptop, assuming it doesn't have built-in wireless already. The card cost me about £25 at the time but you may be able to find the same one cheaper now. Most of these seem to be in this price range if not less, since they are becoming redundant with new laptops already having built-in cards. It's a 802.11G card, which means theoretically, it can transfer 54Mbits/s but they never get to that speed. Most residential broadband connections nowadays only range up to 10Mbit/s.
INSTALLATION
I find the installation of this card has always been very easy. I just install the driver and software off the CD and then plug the card in. This literally takes minutes. Only thing I'm not too keen on is that I think the card sticks out of the PCMCIA slot too much but that's normal for most PCMCIA cards.
USING
You can use the D-Link software or you can use Windows XP SP2's wireless function.. While using the XP function, I'm usually connected as soon as I've turned on my laptop so no need to choose to connect to a network. It's the same with the D-Link utility. When connected to a wireless network, the card flashes.
The D-Link software lets you scan the area for wireless networks and then lets you choose which one you want to connect to. The software looks very professionally made and has information like Link Quality, Signal Strength as well as Data Rate, which is good to know so you know.
The range is pretty good but it varies depending on the Access Point and the surroundings. WiFi connections don't go through thick walls too well and thin walls may also lower the quality of the connection. Signals are better in wide open areas. Despite the walls in my house, I can manage to connect to the Internet wirelessly in most parts of the house. I can also pick up the neighbour's wireless point, which is probably about 20 metres or more away (not sure who's it belongs to). My WiFi Access Point (a Draytek Vigor 2600G Wireless Router) has WEP security enabled. Once I enter the security key, I can access the network and Internet flawlessly. I know that some wireless cards are picky with accessing certain Access Points that have security turned on so that's a relief.
As well as access the Internet, I am also able to access my network to transfer files, remotely control my PC, etc. I find that the connection to the network and Internet to be very stable and the only times it's been unstable is when the wireless router / Access Point isn't working properly.
Transfer rates, as expected are not as fast as when using a wired connection (using Cat5 network cable). On my 2Mbit ADSL connection (capable of up to 230KB/s), speeds typically start off between 100-200KB/s but seem to start to drop to around 90KB/s. This is while the laptop is about 50cm from my router so it's nothing to do with distance or obstructions. It's not top speed but it's still pretty quick.
It does exactly what it's supposed to and does it well. It's easy to use as once set up, you just connect to your network or Internet as usual, just without wires.
SUPPORT
The drivers, software, and manuals are on the CD included but if you ever lose the CD or want updated drivers and software, then they can be downloaded from the D-Link website. D-Link is quite a big company for networking equipment so I am not worried about it disappearing like some smaller hardware suppliers. The website is quite quick with fairly decent download speeds. Not always top speed downloads but acceptable.
Documentation for the card on their website seems to be for a slightly different model labelled 'Xtreme', but I'm guessing they are identical other than the different label. The manual is very thorough, explaining all the terms you could ever worry about even if you won't ever need to know what most of them mean. There are pictures and diagrams where appropriate to help you understand how to set everything up.
VERDICT
It's a nice and simple card. It is a bit outdated now as there are newer wireless specifications available and most, if not all current laptops have built-in wireless, making such cards redundant. If you have an old laptop that does not already have built-in wireless, then I can happily recommend this card. Otherwise, a similar or newer model would do nicely too. All I can say is that it works and I can't fault it.
Thanks for reading!
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
• Laptop notebook with available PCMCIA Slot • Windows XP / 2000 / ME / 98SE • 32MB RAM and 300MHz processor • 802.11g or 802.11b wireless Access Point (probably compatible with newer wireless standards too)
More Reviews
Go Wireless Review ofD-Link Air DWL 650+by
mraouf101
Advantages: Easy to use, install and configue. Product support Disadvantages: Network down sometimes, very delicate
...the combination is amazing.I think d-link has it all. Anyways, considering this DWL650+ , it is compatible with the IEEE 802.11b standard. When you’re connected to other D-Link AirPlus products, the maximum wireless signal rate of up to 22Mbps can be achieved. The DWL-650+ also features 256-bit WEP encryption providing you a higher level of security for your data and communications.
System Requirements:
Your Laptop must have at least 32 MB of memory ... ...technology that with any other D-Link product of WiFi technology, the speed can reach 22mbit per sec.
Note: When i got this product, i used to use the wired connection which is 100mbit per sec speed, so when i used this product the speed of copying files between computers is very slow considering wired connections, but u can enjoy the wirless freedom.
Problems:
* As i mentioned before, if u r using wired connections, then the speed of copying ...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: good performance Disadvantages: no linux support *** no 108Mbps
...After some adds of the 108Mbps capabilities of the DWL-G650 and DWL-520 cards I decided to buy one.
Unlucky me! I received the DWL-G650+ and DWL-520+. Apparently, these are the versions D-Link reserves for out-side the US. Trying to upgrade to 108Mbps as promised in the adds was unsuccessful. I didn't even find any info on the G650+ cards on the .COM website. Mails to D-Link remained unanswered. After some research in the newsgroups, I found out the following :
The DWL-G650+ and DWL-520+ are using a different chipset than the G650 (the "+" is very important). You will not find this info on the D-Link website because the "+" has two major implications :
1:because the G650+ uses a cheaper chipset (Motorola) it has currently no 108Mbps support as its bigger brother does (G650, no "+").
2:because of this chipset it has a very...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: Good Speed *** Linux Support Disadvantages: installation
...After some adds of the 108Mbps capabilities of the DWL-G650 and DWL-520 cards I decided to buy one.
Unlucky me! I received the DWL-G650+ and DWL-520+. Apparently, these are the versions D-Link reserves for out-side the US. Trying to upgrade to 108Mbps as promised in the adds was unsuccessful. I didn't even find any info on the G650+ cards on the .COM website. Mails to D-Link remained unanswered. After some research in the newsgroups, I found out the following :
The DWL-G650+ and DWL-520+ are using a different chipset than the G650 (the "+" is very important). You will not find this info on the D-Link website because the "+" has two major implications :
1:because the G650+ uses a cheaper chipset (Motorola) it has currently no 108Mbps support as its bigger brother does (G650, no "+").
2:because of this chipset it has a very...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: PCMCIA, doesn't take up USB port Disadvantages: Slows computer, occasionally not recognised
...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...
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful
The D-Link AirPlus DWL-650+ CardBus Adapter is an enhanced 802.11b CardBus featuring advanced silicon chip design from Texas Instruments that utilizes their patented Digital Signal Processing technology. The DWL-650+ is fully compatible with the IEEE 802.11b standard making it interoperable with all existing 802.11b compliant devices. When connected to standard 802.11b devices, transfer rates can be up to 20%. When connected to other D-Link AirPlus products, the performance is even greater - up to 22Mbps! The DWL-650+ also features 256-bit WEP encryption providing you a higher level of security for your data and communications. The D-Link AirPlus DWL-650+ also includes a configuration utility to discover available wireless networks and create and save detailed connectivity profiles for those networks most often accessed. The DWL-650+ is a powerful 32-bit CardBus Adapter that installs quickly and easily into laptop PCs and when used with other D-Link AirPlus products automatically connects to the network. And all D-Link wireless adapters can be used in ad-hoc mode to connect directly with other cards or in infrastructure mode to connect with a wireless access point for access to the Internet in your office or home network.
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