| Linksys WMP54G Wireless-G PCI Adapter |
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Model: WMP54G
Brand: Linksys
Manufacturer: Linksys
Average Rating: 
(submit your review here)
Total Reviews: 166
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP
Form factor: Plug-in card
Hardware platform: PC
Data link protocol: IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g
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| Features: |
Operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency spectrum with speeds up to 54 Mbps
Complies with IEEE 802.11g draft standards, and is backwards compatible with IEEE 802.11b products
Installs in most desktops and lets you put your computer almost anywhere in the building
Up to 128-bit WEP encryption
Compatible with Windows 98SE, Me, 2000, and XP |
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| Description: |
| The Linksys WMP54G Wireless-G PCI Card for Windows PC connects you with Wireless-G networks at speeds up to 54Mbps. It also has backward compatibility to interoperate with all the 11Mbps Wireless-B (802.11b) products found in homes, businesses, and public wireless hotspots around the country. With 128-bit security encryption, wireless data transfer is extremely secure. 128-Bit Encryption Toll-Free Tech Support from Linksys ! Year Linksys Limited Warranty Includes SetUp Wizard CD-ROM and user's guide |
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| User Reviews (166 total): |
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 of Total 8 Pages
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Works fine, March 26, 2005
By J. Chou (Pasadena, CA United States)
Plug and play. Works immediately. Of course it helps that the rest of my wireless setup are all made by Linksys. Save yourself some headache, don't mix-match your wireless gears.
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If you wish to use WPA Encryption, this is not your product!, March 25, 2005
By Jg Matta
I bought this thinking no problem with current Wi-Fi technology. My Linksys WRT54G Router supports WPA-SPK; as is how I set-up my home network. Our Dell laptops run WPA-PSK encryption with no problem, easy set-up. When trying to bring our desktops into the network, we discovered THIS CARD DOES NOT SUPPORT WPA ENCRYPTION WITHOUT A THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE (at your cost). Buy the "2Wire" 802.11G adapter, either USB or PCI. It works right out of the box.
J Matta
Vernon Hills, IL
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Don't Waste Your Valuable Time, March 1, 2005
By Brian Cantarini (Santee, CA USA)
2/28/05: Though it claims to work with Windows 98, this product will not. This was purchased to update an older PC, one which would not be a good candidate for a newer operating system such as XP. If you're considering purchase of this card, read on for a viable alternative. If you have one already, return it if you can, or find a door needing a doorstop. You'll discover it is better suited to that purpose.
Scan through the reviews here and you'll notice a trend I didn't until too late... This card seems to work well under WinXP, but not with anything else. After wasting far too much time, including an upgrade to Win98SE, I exchanged this worthless card for a D-Link DWL-G520. The D-Link installed and worked flawlessly, and best of all it took less than 10 minutes to be up and running.
I'm something of a Linksys fan, and am NOT a rank beginner. I've had good results with various Linksys routers, PCCards, PCI Cards, wireless products, etc. Yes they're occasionally quirky, but can usually be massaged into submission. This product is waaaay beyond quirky, and IMHO enters the realm of fraud by claiming compatibility where it should not.
1/11/06: Ah-hah! It's not necessarily a Win98 problem, though I haven't had a chance to completely rule it out. Attempting to buy and install a new-fangled WMP54GX card in an older system. This system was first given a clean WinXP installation. The new WMP54GX card wouldn't install either, causing a painful case of deja vu. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment, since I spent hours, yes _hours_ fooling with the card until I finally stumbled on the answer, so to speak.
Answer ID 125 in Linksys' knowledge base states in part:
"Linksys PCI network adapter cards require PCI Bus Mastering slots to function correctly. Some older system motherboards do not have Bus Mastering PCI slots." They follow with suggestions to uninstall, reinstall, and move the card to different PCI slots in case you get lucky and find one that works. That took more hours. Too bad for me.
No mention of this on the box, in the manual, or in any sales literature. Because of this, I stand by my "near-fraud" comment above, as Linksys clearly should list this limitation in its system requirements, and they clearly know it will cause a problem for some buyers. Oh, guess which card I bought for this PC that *did* work, and how quickly and effortlessly it installed.
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randomly drops connection., February 20, 2005
By B. Chu
On the plus side, this PCI adapter installs like a charm. Put it in, everything gets recognized without a hitch. Unfortunately, after it connects, it drops the wireless connection for no reason at least once an hour. The signal is strong (3 or 4 out of 5 bars strong) when it is connected, then it drops, then reconnects about 10 seconds later. I have not been able to figure out the problem. I have heard others have the same problem, so I will look for something else that doesn't suck as much.
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Performance is intermittent, February 18, 2005
By D. Nicholson (Minneapolis, MN)
I purchased two of these along with a WAP54G access point. I have a Cisco 806 router configured with DHCP at the core of my home network. The problem I had was that BOTH cards would regularly disconnect and reconnect to the network even though signal strength was excellent. The problem went away when I hard configured the cards with their IP addresses rather than obtain them from the router. By the way, both cards were installed into Windows XP SP2 machines.
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JUNK! Save your money! USB instead!, February 17, 2005
By William Stewart (New York)
My old linksys wireless-B PCI card worked great. But the linksys replacement wireless-G version got inadaquate reception from the exact same location! If you want linksys wireless-G, purchase the linksys USB version [WUSB54G]. It resolved my issue! ;-)~
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win xp sp 2 no problems, February 11, 2005
By Harmohit S. Datta (NJ)
Popped it in. Works. Connects me to the Linksys wireless hub. Nothing else I need.
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GREAT, January 26, 2005
By Bryan (Colorado Springs, CO USA)
This wireless PCI adapter from lynksys works wonders. Very simple to install. I had a harder time taking the side off of my computer than i did actually installing it. Works great with Windows XP. Its evertyhing i need. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for GREAT wireless network connection.
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Never could get it to work with Windows 2000, January 20, 2005
By John Tauxe (Lost Almost, NM USA)
Attempting to get the Linksys WMP54G PCI wireless card to work on a desktop computer running Windows 2000 was an exercise in frustration. After four sessions talking with Linksys customer support (at least it's a toll-free number, hence 1 star) and another session using on-line chat, I have given up. Linksys never was able to help me get this card working. The principal problem was that it inevitably made the computer hang. No amount of troubleshooting made a difference. Apparently, it seems to work for XP users, but I would not recommend this card for anyone using Windows 2000. I returned it.
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does not work with Linux, December 14, 2004
By Brian McMinn (Austin, TX)
I thought a NIC was a NIC and Linux would happily use this card but no, that's not the case. Apparently, the manufacturer of this card (and most wireless adapter cards) has not made enough information available to enable someone to write a driver for Linux. A company called Linuxant sells a $20 program that will adapt the Windows driver for use under Linux. That raises the overall price to where a wireless bridge (Netgear WGE101 for example) is only a few dollars more. No hassle (I hope!) and more flexibility makes that a better solution for me.
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Easy to install and stable., December 11, 2004
By Jude Ignacio (Tucson, AZ)
First, I already have a WRT54G, and my desktop has WinXP.
I took me less than 10 minutes to install this baby: open computer, stick the card into slot, close computer, attach cables, attach antenna, turn on computer, stick CD-ROM into CD player and follow onscreen instructions to setup WPA encrytion. Voila! 54 Mbps transmit rate. Easier than pie.
I've read reviews about the antenna falling off. As far as I could tell, one would have to manhandle the thing for it to strip the threads on the attachment. Otherwise, no problem.
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Works great on Mac OS X, December 7, 2004
By Robert Pratte (charleston, il USA)
I had three Mac towers that I needed to install wireless cards in. Two were blue and white G3s, the other was a G4. I installed the Motorola 802.11g card in the G4 and one of the G3s (a revision 1), and the Linksys card in the other G3 (a revision 2). All are running Jaguar 10.2.8, all worked like a charm on my Airport Extreme network. My only complaint is that the antenna seems a bit cheap, and I had to place it oddly due to the power and vga plugs. However, since I could rotate and tilt the antenna, this was easily accomplished.
Anyway, I did not encounter any problems using this card - I simply inserted it, plugged the machine in, clicked to turn the card on, and I was on the network. I had the same experience with the Motorola cards, and they seem to be a bit cheaper (in price), but I do not hesitate to recommend the Linksys card to Mac owners.
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Works fine after some installation glitch on Linux, November 30, 2004
By cupiemayo (Santa Barbara, California)
By nature I tend not to believe in things that are not visible in action, and radio transmission is one of them. But TV and radio always work fine so I am of course exaggerating. It is true when things go wrong with wireless, troubleshooting is harder just because it for sure is not because of a dumb human mistake like not plugging in the cord, for example. But now that this thing is working, I am a believer.
With all the reviews, I just add my experience using this card with on a Debian Linux box. I have to say it was a pain in the butt to get it working in my situation. I've tried ndiswrapper as most people would suggest, but with some customization (upgraded kernel, lots of backports packages, etc.), I could never get reliable performace out of this.
Now my current solution---a quite good one---is to use the RT2500 driver by www.ralinktech.com (note that older WMP54G cards use different chip, not RT2500; you have to check the version of your card). This one needs building from source, but it has been the only reliable solution for me. Note that if your system uses a lot of backports on Debian, you might need to downgrade the driver version, like I am doing right now.
So when this guy is working, it does so well. But I wish it has a better Linux support. On the Window side of my machine, the installation was a breeze so it should certainly be possible for Linksys to support Linux better.
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Be careful, September 25, 2004
By Just a dude (Phoenix Arizona)
There's very little indication on the box as to whether this is version 2 (WPA compatible) or version 4 (not WPA compatible).
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An exasperating waste, September 12, 2004
By JB3 (L.A., CA USA)
Desktop WinXP, wireless Win2000, two full wasted days.
The WMP54G is technically "active", but will not connect to the router. I literally reformatted the hard drive AND stripped the wireless machine down TO THE BONE to ensure there were NO other factors at play. I also paid a genuine guru (who makes a living at this sort of thing) to look at it, and after several hours he gave up too. This thing is going in the trash.
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A red cent is worth more., September 6, 2004
By Da Dawg Hunts
How anyone could put a product like this on the market beats me. I have never been so frustrated in installing a piece of hardware into a computer in my fifteen years working with them.
You can toss a coin and come up with the probablity of whether or not it will work in your computer. I tried it in my second one at the suggestion of linksys support (I never talked to anyone in India before)and it worked, whatever that was supposed to prove. The one that it wouldn't work in was the one I wanted to install it into and that one wasn't complyin'. And Linksys support was no help whatsoever. All they did was prove that their was nothing broken on their adaptor. If you buy one of these, make sure you get a list of the computers that it will work in. This card is priority to the nth degree. I tried to install mine during a moonless night and now I'm waiting for a full moon to try it again, before I consult with my vodoo oracle.
Or maybe I'll try to get it exorcised. Seriously! don't buy one.
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Problems with XP SP1a & SP2, August 31, 2004
By Kevin Murphy (Los Angeles, CA USA)
I tried installing this on an Athlon XP running a brand-new clean install of XP Service Pack 2.
XP comes up and says it has a new "network adapter" but will not accept the drivers on the Linksys disk. Running the Linksys disk by itself fails, as the Linksys setup program crashes.
Manually selecting the drivers sometimes (??) works, but after about 5 mintues the card stops working and after a few "repair connection" operations, WIndows disables the card. And it won't work again until you uninstall and reinstall the drivers.
Some on the net believe that some of this behavior is due to a "common" wireless pakcage MS introduced in XP SP1a, and before that as a critical Hotfix. Maybe, but it seems to be more that this card just sux.
BTW, I've been dealing with computers since 1971.
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Piece Of Junk!!, August 20, 2004
By proudcelt (Seattle, WA)
The Linksys WMP54G is a piece of junk. I purchased one recently for a two year old Dell desktop running Win2K. The drivers that came in the box would not load, so I let the OS finsih the install without loading drivers then used Window's update function to add them. Windows still didn't like the drivers, but I forced them through and the device changed status to Code 10, Cannot Start. Linksys tech support, which is in India, was less than helpful, assuring me it was a bad PCI slot. Removed the card and installed into a brand new Gateway desktop running XP Pro. Exact same problem. Read some reviews and did some research, then threw the Linksys product in the trash and purchased a Netgear WG311 wireless PCI adapter. Installed correctly the first try in the Win2K machine and took < 2 minutes to configure with my SSID and WEP key. Price is the same and the Netgear product works as advertised. The moral...DON'T BUY LINKSYS
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Very Stable Product, August 2, 2004
By Michael (California)
I have been through several networking brands including d-link netgear and belkin (dont ever try), and linksys has always come out on top despite its terrible customer service. I installed this on my pc (os:XP) and with about 4 hours I got the antenna pointed just right to get an 'excellent' signal strength. Being 30 ft away from my wireless linksys router which is behind 2 well insulated walls I was very impressed. So, even though it took quite a lot of my time, this product is well worth the $ in my opinion.
good luck!
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no worries, May 21, 2004
By Dr. Rob (Huntsville, AL)
This is a great card for your desktop. I have a homebuilt PC runing windows XP. I set up a totally wireless G network yesterday morning with a linksys wireless router kit and the desktop was the first to go online (and it was not the computer used to configure the router). Sofware and hardware Installation were both easy and took less than 5 minutes. I get great reception about 40 feet from the router on a different floor of my apartment. I have been able to stream long streams without dropping. Excelent card, worth the extra dough.
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