| Linksys WPC11 Wireless-B Notebook Adapter |
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Model: WPC11
Brand: Linksys
Manufacturer: Linksys
Average Rating: 
(submit your review here)
Total Reviews: 417
Platforms: Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT 3.5, Windows NT 4, Windows NT 5, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows 2000 Server, Windows
Operating system: Microsoft Windows 2000
Form factor: Plug-in module
Hardware platform: PC
Data link protocol: IEEE 802.11b
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| Features: |
11 Mbps high-speed transfer rate
Advanced Power Management features conserve valuable notebook PC battery life
Compatible with Windows Windows 98SE, ME, 2000, XP
Rugged metal design with integrated antenna
Works with all standard Internet applications |
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| Description: |
| A IEEE 802.11b wireless Type II PCMCIA-type network card giving you wireless Ethernet access up to 1,640 feet away / For Windows Rugged metal design with integrated antenna Advanced power management features Compatible with Windows 95, 98, Millennium, NT, & 2000 To use with your desktop PC, add the Linksys WDT11 Instant Wireless PC Adapter |
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| User Reviews (417 total): |
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Doesn't work with WinME, February 14, 2002
By unknown
This card will not work with WinME. On setup, it won't find the drivers. Downloading drivers from linksys SHOULD have solved the problem, but did not as it would not configure. The TCP/IP Adapter will not permit configuring with WinME.Overall: LOUSY !!!!
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It could be much better, February 11, 2002
By bartolo6 (Huesca, SPAIN)
My card worked with XP by its support for it was scarce to say the least. Range is bad, and the prove is that Linksys has released a 2.5 version of this card with the new feature of 'extended range'. Look somewhere else.
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Good Access Points...lousy PC Cards, February 9, 2002
By unknown
I have a linksys access point and it works very well with other cards like Orinoco, and Enterasys...but the Linksys PC cards are terrible. They have terrible performance (I've gone through 3 of them). The link quality drops off dramatically, even at short distances away from the access point. Save your money, buy the Orinoco instead.
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No Customer Support!, February 9, 2002
By Cris Waller (Jamul, CA United States)
I can't get this darned thing to work...and Linksys has been no help! Called once, got a tech after 45 minutes who said "Oh, the drivers on the CD don't work, you have to get them from our website." Well, those drivers won't install- I get a missing DLL message. Called again, late at night- waited TWO AND ONE HALF HOURS on hold and never got a tech...hung up and emailed...it's been over 24 hours and not a peep from tech support. If their product is as lousy as their support, I wouldn't bother!
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Linksys Wireless pcmcia card wpc-11, February 7, 2002
By ,Dan C. Long Island, New York. (Farmingville, new york United States)
Ordered this item on 2/6/02, then noticed that it would not be shipped untill Feb.13,2002. This was very unacceptable, so I had to cancel this order and buy the item locally at a higher price.Very unsatisfactory I feel.
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Great device but impossible to install., February 3, 2002
By Bret Squire (Ann Arbor, MI USA)
After a half a day of trying to get the card to work I found it to work beautifully. My suggestion for those who also buy the wireless router... do not follow the quick installation guide. All you must remember is mode=Infrastructure.
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WPC11, January 31, 2002
By Shack (Mobile, AL)
I have a Oronico Lucent card and an existing router and AP from Linksys. I have been very satisfied with Linksys and their products. They seem to play well with CISCO devices and wireless IPAQ processors as well as my laptop.
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wirless lan, January 29, 2002
By unknown
It works great! As design, I plugged in and there it goes. I like the led on the little icon; it turns from green to yellow telling me the strength of the connection, and when I am far away. You will definitely have to stay away from 2.4 Ghz phone when you're using it far away from the access point.
Great product I would recommend to anybody going wireless. The only tip i can advice to anyone going wireless is to stick with same manufacturing products in the beginning, from switch to card like I did, and then once everything works one can mix and match. The only negative side perhaps is the WEB encryption support. They claim they have it but I don't think is there yet, the switch doesn't have it yet so i couldn't confirm the encryption yet, Otherwise is a great!!!
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Not easy to set up, but works, January 27, 2002
By Emmett O'Leary (Boise, ID)
Difficult product to set up, but functions well once installed. Other reviews telling of the poor range are true. Has good range within 50 feet, but soon fades rapidly.
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Poor performance under XP using D-Link WAP, January 17, 2002
By J. Chang (Philadelphia, PA United States)
I used this card under Windows 2000 accessing a D-LINK WAP. Installation, setup, configuration, and speed were excellent. I was averaging about 70-90% link quality and around 6Mbps transfer between PC's. The DLInk was connected to a cable modem and speed was amazing. I just got an XP laptop and started using this card. Performance has dropped to aroun 20-40% link quality and MAYBE 1Mbps data transfer. It's almost like being back to dial-up. The drivers released for XP .... I've tried reinstalling, using the config utility, not using the config utility, you name it. I have a small condo and I'm about 50 feet from the WAP as the crow flies. I have a few walls between me and the WAP but that was no problem under Win2K. I'm VERY disappointed in this thing. ...
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weak technique support and hard to install, January 17, 2002
By columbus (Hilliard, OH USA)
I fighted millions of times trying to install this card on my Dell Latitude c610 (win2000). I never had good luck except a couple of times. I routinely got the famouse Code 10 and Code 31 errors in the hardware installment wizard. Even if I was lucky to have it work, I had to do the installement again after I shut down the computer.There are not much techinique support from Linksys website. I tried their solution to my problem. But no luck at all. What made me feel so bad was that I could use a Lucent PC card without ANY installment. I pushed it in the computer, it worked immediately.
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It's cheap and it works. Range could be better., January 16, 2002
By Cary Fields (Corona, CA USA)
I own two WPC11's (PC Cards) and a Wireless PCI with a WAP11. Running on Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. Haven't had a problem yet with connectivity, unless I'm out of range. I can use it in my two story house, but not in every room. Had a problem with getting 128bit WEP to work, but I finally ironed out the problems. Setup was a breeze, took maybe 10 minutes to get it working. Haven't had a problem with any drivers. Had to call Linksys Tech Support to get clarification on whether the WPC11 would work on an IPAQ w/ PocketPC 2002. Their definitive answer...NOPE! Said I HAD to get a WCF11 (Wireless Compact Flash). Word of advice...don't call their tech support, email them ..., the techs doing email are more knowledgeable by far.
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Range is horrible- stay away, January 15, 2002
By stainedglassmusic (Torrance, CA USA)
I can't believe this card gets good reviews. The only time this card was useful for me was when I was using it in the same room as the hub. Stay away from this card.I wasted money on three of these cards and while I had no problem setting them up they have an extremely limited range. Once you get about 20 feet away the connection status drops to poor. Once you have to go through a wall or upstairs/downstairs the link drops entirely. Very very disappointing. I finally bought a CISCO Aironet 350. What a DIFFERENCE! Signal strength is at least 100% better. The client tools are also much better. I can now use my laptop anywhere in the house. I am now looking at replacing the Linksys PCI cards too!
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Works Great for me, can't understand the other reviews!, January 14, 2002
By R.J. Peacock (San Francisco, California United States)
I still cannot understand all the negative reviews on here about both the Wireless 4 port Router / Hub and now the WPC11. Had I gone by the reviews of both of these products, I never would have bought the items.Let me tell you the opposite of these negative reviews on the WPC11. I received the card yesterday, followed the instructions sheet installing the software / drivers first, re-booting, inserting the card, re-booting again once recognized and I was immediately on my network. The total installation took less than 5 minutes and I'm writing this review on my laptop in my living room at 11 Mbps, as advertised. Also, I installed this on Windows 2000. I did not have one problem whatsoever. I am a systems engineer myself but none of my engineering skills were needed other than being able to read the instructions as they were written. I'm not sure why other people have such problems with these items as I've not experienced anything mentioned yet. I'm 100% satisfied with my card and can't say enough about how well it works and how EASY it was to install. I would definitely recommend to anyone. If you don't know much about computers, I suggest you use the linksys site, read the directions a couple of times and get familiar before starting the install. Also, I'm sure you can surf the internet for help in installing it if you run into problems - outside of the liksys site. Good luck and if you're searching for a solid wireless network, Linksys provides a good one!
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WPC11 and XP = Oil and water, January 14, 2002
By unknown
It may be the non-certified driver, it may be my audacity in trying to use WEP, but the WPC11 and Windows XP Home Edition have yet to work reliably despite many hours of tweaking and twiddling. Sorry guys, it just should not be this hard.
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poor customer tech service, January 12, 2002
By unknown
The product seems like it's working (finally up with no help from their support people) fine but the customer support was poor. After waiting on hold for 1.5 hours the tech was less than helpful and actualy disconnected the call.
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For those installing on Windows XP, January 12, 2002
By unknown
I bought this wireless PC card for my laptop because I wanted to share my broadband cable internet connection. I bought this card along with the BEFW11s4 wireless AP router and after setting it up, it is worthwhile! I would really recommend this card if u want a cheap yet reliable internet connection. However, I do have to note that installation for this requires prior knowledge of networking. Being a computer engineer, I had a relatively easy time setting it up; however there are few things some entry level computer shoppers have to beware of. This includes updating firmware on the AP; downloading Windows XP drivers before installing this PC Card, and also mapping network drives within your LAN. You must also have knowledge of configuring TCP/IP properties (i.e. DHCP and Infrastructure Mode). Just a note to those having problems installing this WPC11 Linksys card into Windows XP notebooks. THIS IS NOT IN THE SETUP MANUAL THAT LINKSYS PROVIDES. AFTER SUCCESSFULLY INSTALLING THE PROPER DRIVERS AND THE ACCOMPYNING SETUP UTILITY CONFIGURATION TOOL, MAKE SURE YOU RESET THE ROUTER. I found this the hard way after assuming I had done something wrong during the installation process. The reason for resetting is so your notebook does not pick the same IP address as your other PC within your LAN. Well, good luck. Hope I could be of help to some of you future buyers. Overall, I am extrememly satisfied with the range, unlike some of those who claim you do not have any range. It may be because my house is fairly spacious, nonetheless, I would receommend keeping such things in mind when u do make your wireless product purchase.
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Range misleading, January 9, 2002
By Truman Williams, Jr. (Birmingham, AL)
I'm mostly pleased with this card. I have one in my laptop, and another in my new desktop with a PCI adapter. I'm not using an Access Point - I use Win98's ICS from the desktop upstairs to the laptop downstairs (or anywhere else in the house.) Since I got these cards, I've had their baud rates set on "fully auto". This works fine for close range, but my suggestion is to NOT do this if you have to go through walls, or are having trouble with the radio signal. After I tried WEP on & off, I finally decided to turn the rate down to 1 Mbits/s. It worked! (so far, anyway) I'm not saying that a higher bitrate wouldn't work, but since DSL is under 2 Mbits/s, it doesn't matter that much. And my final point is that the "auto" didn't work, even when it said it was at 1 or 2 Mbits/s - I had to manually set the rate for it to work with a weak signal. Good luck!
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Bad Performance on NT; would not work on 2000, January 7, 2002
By unknown
Installed on Windows-NT laptop: Even with the link and signal strength reading "excellent" the best through-put I could get was 20KBytes/sec, even though the connection was supposedly 11Mbits/sec. Downloading the same large file from the same site using a Xircom card directly into the router gave 200KBytes/sec. So the 11Mbit/sec was meaningless. And this was with the laptop in the same room as the Linksys WAP11 access point. The bottom line is the configuration tools connection speed metrics don't really mean anything; the proof is in the actual download speeds.Installed on Windows 2000: On another Windows 2000-based laptop I could never get a connection no matter what I tried to do. I even tried to update the drivers, but they were already the latest. As a last resort I updated the WAP11 firmware from 1.4g to 1.4f. That was the critical mistake. After the firmware update went seemingly smoothly, when I started the configuration utility, I could see it had mangled all the pervious settings to the piont that some of the dropdown boxes (the one that selects the channel number in particular) no longer had any drop-down selections, so it was impossible to make any configuration changes, and who knows what actual values the box was actually using at that point. Needless to say, I didn't get any connectivity. After fiddling with it for another hour or so, I finally gave up and returned both the WAP11 and the WPC11. I was surprised this went so badly concidering the Linksys router I have has worked flawlessly and had an effortless install and configuration. The WAP11 at first seemed the same, until I was severly disappointed with the WPC11 performance, and finally the disasterous firmware upgrade. I no longer trust their products and the online help and documentation is cursory at best. I guess I'll check out Netgears products next. 2 stars since there was at least poor performance on NT.
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Limited range makes it unusable!, January 7, 2002
By unknown
I bought and installed this card with the Linksys 802.11b wireless router on a Win98 laptop. I wanted to have some mobility around the house. The installation went OK and I had a connection sitting at a desk 1 meter away from the AP. But as soon as I took the laptop and went to the bedroom (~15meters), the connection was lost. It didn't even work in the hallway to the office room. I had to return the card, but kept the router. I'm still looking for a card replacement. Want to try Orinoko or Cisco, but the local stores don't have them and I'm wary of wasting the shipping charges online again.
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