Once that was done, my laptop did not freeze, but now it would not communicate with the router. A call to customer support showed that my adapter was assigned "a bad IP address" and they gave me a number to manually enter. Apparently, this is a common problem...so maybe it would have been a good idea to put something in the installation instructions.

After correcting the IP address problem, the card would connect for about 2 minutes then drop the connection, despite being about 3 feet from the router. Another call to customer support, and about 30minutes later, I was told to return it.

Once you get the replacement card working, it is not so great either. My router is in one room, and when I am in an adjacent room, I can surf the net for about 10-20 minutes before I lose the connection. I have not been able to surf for longer than half an hour. I remove the card and stick it back in and it usually picks up the connection again. Annoying.

This is the only notebook card I have ever used, so I don't know if the others are better. But installation should not have been this problematic.

If all you want is a wireless system that lets you update files on your lap top without re-connecting cables all the time, then buy this card. It works. But if you want to use the Internet and access a home network seemlessly and wirelessly anywhere in your house, buy the Orinoco Silver or Gold PCMCIA card instead. It costs a bit more, but the range is easily double that of the linksys.

By the way, the only differance between silver and gold is its encryption ability. If you don't care about encryption, save some money and go for the Orinoco silver card.

Reviewed by Mark E. Cooper
Author of The Warrior Within (0954512200)

I give it a 5 out of 5 stars. It works perfectly all the time no matter where I go in the house with my laptop.

the signal reception range is not so great, i dont know if its beacuse of the WRT54G Wireless-G Access Point + Cable/DSL Router or this card, but 4 walls away from my room in my house, i start to lose the signal.

What is most frustrating is that the adapter often "sees" the network, but won't connect. When it *does* connect, I only get a range of about 10 feet before the signal drops off.

Overall, this has been a nightmare. Avoid!

I have a small house -- but I have been able to go all over it with no problems. I have spent sometime out in the yard, but I have not needed nor tried to test the boundaries.

I will say that I am sold on the ease of use of the Linksys products. This has been the best new technology I have used in a long time.

There is nothing to making this card work besides installing the driver and starting to work. The best speed achieved so far is 54 MbS whilein the same room with the router, 48 MbS when located on a different level and two rooms down. Speed drops off when distance increase to over 100 feet and there are ubstructing walls, including an exteriior stucco wall that has signal eating chicken wire.

However, multiple machines are hanging and banging on this technology without incident.

The best thing: NO MORE CABLES!

Linksys supports the newer more secure WPA protocol and I highly recommend using it since WEP 128 is almost useless to prevent specific attacks against your network. You should use WPA-PSK (Pre-Shared Key) with TKIP encryption on the router and on the properties of the wireless card. Though Linksys has supported WPA since May you won't find anything about how to configure it on the card and router in their knowledge base. The Key can be any letter, number and a few symbols from 8-63 characters long. You can also set the Group Key renewal 0-99,999 sec. I set it to 0. Under the IEEE 802.1x authentication set the EAP type to PEAP and uncheck boxes for "Authenticate as computer when information is available" and "Authenticate as guest..." unless you use these features. Also, change the SSID and don't broadcast it and use MAC filtering to lockdown your network.

I did have a small problem with the signal cutting out every 3 minutes. This problem is because of IEE 802.1x authentication being enabled by XP and not the fault of the card. Every time I changed the SSID XP defaulted to enabling the 802.1x authentication. To change the authentication: Control Panel>Network Connections>rt click Wireless Network Connection select Properties. In the new window, tab to Wireless Network. Under the Preferred networks pane select your wireless network and hit the Properties radio button. In this new window, tab to Authentication. The "Enable IEEE 802.1x authentication for this network" box should be unchecked.

IEE 802.1x authentication is for port controlled server authentication and is not needed in most home networks.

For security, under your network Properties window you should have WEP 128 enabled and the Network Authentication should be "Open". Also, change your SSID to something obscure and do not broadcast it.

- downloading drivers
- speaking with tech support
- trolling online for other reports
- installing/rebooting/uninstalling/repeating

I tried the card on my Thinkpad R32 and Thinkpad X20 both running windows 2000. The R32 uses the TI cardbus chipset, and the X20 uses the Ricoh. In both cases, the card drivers freeze the laptop completely, both the standard driver and the "beta" TI version.

Linksys finally acknowledged that the card doesn't really work very well and I should return it to where I purchased it and get a different model. On 2 out of 3 calls to tech support I was promised that a newer, better driver would be mailed to me, but never was.

I've been working with computers for over 20 years, I've owned several dozen in my time, and I know what I'm talking about when I say this product is not ready for commercial release.

Unbelievably shoddy, and unacceptable. Linksys should be punished in the marketplace.

Don't waste your dollars on this...