Firstly - the basics. The card fits into your PC Card Slot (sometimes referred to as PCMCIA). Most laptops will have at least one of these, and some of the bulkier machines will have 2. This is preferrable to me using this slot as I only have one USB slot on my laptop and that is USB1.0 (not the newer quicker USB2.0).
Shape and size The card will "stick out" from the laptop PC slot by about 6cm, meaning it is not too obvious, however I have seen smaller alternatives. The measurements of the card completely are (obviously) the standard PC Card, and shown as 12.4cm by the manufacturer.
Casing The card has a thin blue outer shell which displays two lights - one light indicates "power" and the other "Link/Act" - which tells you whether you have a connection or not. This second light will flash when downloading, which sounds annoying - however it is unobtrusive and useful to tell whether you are still connected or not. The only other distinguishing feature is on the standard grey plastic that shows when the card is plugged in is the word "Linksys".
How well does it work? I have had my card now for 7 months and it has been great, whenever a signal has been available it has picked it up easily and quickly, and the support software provided is good (much better than standard Windows software and diagnostics). I have been in numerous locations (airports, houses, schools, businesses, and countries (Europe, Asia, North America) and never had any issues - well certainly none that the card has caused!
Temperature Operation Linksys tells you this card only works down to 0 degrees C, not so - I have used this in conditions down to -18 C (not recommended) and it worked fine for the 10 minutes or so I tried!
Download Speed Speed of download is dependant upon so many variables (website, wireless router, time of day, weather!) that it is difficult to judge download speeds of a card with any authority, other than to say along side other laptops it seems to be no slower nor faster than them.
Support The website support is quite poor, i went to see if there was an updated driver or anything of use and it was an incredibly difficult website to navigate, not the cards fault (that was after all connecting me to the internet to look in the first place), but say I upgraded to Vista then it may become an issue.
Price I bought mine from Overclockers and paid 79.79 (inc delivery).
Summary The card is a great adapter with the latest technology (Wireless-N/G/B and MIMO), all of which are a lot of letters but basically indicate it can connect to the latest industry standard wireless networks. However with most laptops now having an internal wireless card it may be un-neccessary for most users.
If you have a slightly more mature laptop like me, this is a great card, which in my 7 months, has not let me down once.
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