I'm sure this review will get lots of negative feedback, but I don't care. Someone has to let people know what a piece of garbage this product and the WUSB11 are.

I bought this sometime in Febuary and there hasn't been a day where I haven't had to do something extra to get it to work. These things may include unplugging and plugging back in the WAP11, my router, the internet cable connection, or [messing] with the settings, or giving up in frustration and reading a book. I've spent, no joke, at least 21 hours with the tech support line, and the vast amount of that time is waiting on hold with a repeating voice telling me that they're having unusually high traffic and that I should be patient. Well, it's simply no wonder they have such high volume when they produce this kind of junk. I'm at the end of my patience. The first time I called, I got disconneted, maybe by the tech support guy because he couldn't figure out my problem. Then the second time I called, the device worked for about a week before it went down again. The third time I called back, we went through completly different steps to get it to work again, and it worked for about another week, almost hassle free. The fourth time I called back, I was told my problem was a known issue, whatever ... that is since they didn't tell me what the problem was, and they told me to send my product (the WUSB11) back for a replacement, on my dime, nonetheless. I get their replacement, ..., it worked for about a week before it started doing the same kind of crap the old one did. Things like seeing the network connection, but not connecting, working for 10 minutes at a time, then going down for the day, moving the WAP11 or WUSB11 across the room and going out for the day.

Oh, and if you like to play video games over the internt, things like Unreal Tournament or Return to Castle Wolfenstein, prepare to have the game freeze every minute for 3 seconds. Now, that may not sound so bad, but its [really bad] when it freezes and you wake up dead. I suppose this is another known issue that they have no solution for.

Now, you may be saying to yourself, hey, this guy is an idiot who knows nothing about technology and computers. If it doesn't work then it's probably his own fault or ignorance. But, then I'd tell you how I have a degree in computer science and am a professional programmer and feel very comfortable around things such as this. This thing simply doesn't work. I'm supposing that for the people it does work for, they must be in the same room as the WAP11, but in that case you don't really need a wireless connection.

So, heed my words, don't buy this if you don't like to live every day in fear that it'll not work today. ...

And if you're wondering why I gave it 2 stars it's because nobody takes seriously one star reviews. On a scale of 1-10, this product should get a negative infinity.

I'm not joking, this thing is that bad.

This disconnecting manifested itself in a 3 ways:

The 2st manifestation was where the adaptor would suddenly be faulty, where it would state that the network cable was unplugged (you can see this in Windows 2000 by opening "Network Connections" you will see the list of adapters and a few columns, including status and description. The status will say "network cable unplugged." The only way to solve this would be to unplug the USB cable and plug it back in, or disable, then re-enable the adapter from the right-click menu, or reboot the machine.

The 2nd manifestation was where the adapter seemed fine, but, I wouldn't suddently lose my IP address. Same solution

The 3rd manifestation was where I had an IP address, but, could not ping anything, not on the LAN or outside the firewall/WAP-router. Same solution.

I recently purchased the new PCI 802.11g card which works on b & g networks at 11mbps & 54mbps... no problems at all...love it... going to write a review about that too.

I am getting almost full signal strength and 11 Mbps, even though the BEFW11S4 router is in the basement (two floors down) and on the opposite side of the house.

The other one I bought for my laptop works just as well, but it is a little awkward carrying something the size of a deck of cards on a 3-foot string around with me as I work. I would have gotten the PCMCIA version, but I read some bad reviews here on it and decided to go with the WUSB11 instead. I just wish I could attach it to my laptop somehow...

As many other reviews will attest, this product simply worked out of the box (well, pretty much). I did have one problem. I was trying to use Windows 2000 Advanced Server and I could not get an IP address from the router...however, the communication between this device and the BEFW11S4 was getting 90% signal quality at 11Mbps. When I tried 'ipconfig' it reported my IP as 0.0.0.0. So I called Linksys at 11:00 PM Saturday night and waited for probably 40 minutes before I got a tech. The FIRST thing I told her was I was using W2K Advanced Server and asked if that would be a problem. She glossed over that fact and went into uninstalling/re-installing the drivers...unfortunately it wasn't such a clean re-install (I had device conflicts that were not there previously). She decided that the CD didn't include the proper drivers so she was going to e-mail them to me within 30 mins. Well I never got them so I went on the website and downloaded it myself, ran it, same problem. BTW, when I would run 'ipconfig /renew' I would get "internal error...disconnect the network interface or reboot". After re-installing from the downloaded drivers and rebooting I got the blue-screen-of-death and had to power off the computer...but this device never stopped communicating with the router (I just never got an IP address from it). Finally I installed Windows 2000 Professional and it DID work perfectly out of the box, first try.

Bottom Line: I don't think this is compatible with Windows 2K Advanced Server. Other than that, it worked 100% perfectly as expected. Good documentation, easy install. Highly recommended.

The only glitch I had to overcome was that the laptops power management system would shut down the wireless driver if it was idle for more than a few minutes. I was able to manually turn off that feature pretty easily, which has resolved that problem. If you're looking for a wireless networking solution for a PC, and a PMCIA card isn't an option, you won't go wrong with this alternative. It's extremely lightweight and remarkably reliable. I highly recommend it.

I wanted the USB device since its portable and I can easily use it on another PC or laptop if I needed to. The first thing I noticed about this device is how small and lightweight it is. Also, it is very lightweight. Its not something I recommend you drop, the plastic is very thin. It looks and feels very cheap. There is a fastening device on it if you want to mount it.

Right now, I have it in the room next to my wireless router. The signal is at or near 100% usually. Getting out to the internet is easy.

It comes with installation software, but here is where it gets tricky. It does not work fully with Windows XP. You need to use XP's built in Zero Configuration Utility. Hopefully, when you plug in your WUSB11 it will detect it, ask you for drivers, you just point it to the CD thats included, and it's installed. Linksys provides these instructions. From here on out, you are on your own. I also recommend updating the drivers from linksys.com.

There are no pictures or instructions included about the XP Zero Configuration Utility. It is simple enough for most. It will detect your SSID, just select it, and you should be on your way. Setting up WEP may be a challenge. You will need to use your HEX keys.

I was able to install the Linksys software by stopping the Zero Config Utility in SERVICES, and then installing the software. Again, the software is NOT needed, but I wanted to see how it worked anyway.

I was able to install this on a Windows98 machine without a problem. The Linksys software installed just fine.

If you are comfortable configuring things in Windows XP, go ahead and get this. If not, you may want to find a product that gives better Windows XP support. Linksys Help Support will NOT support the Zero Config Utility if you have problems with it. They will tell you to call Microsoft (good luck with that!).

Everything works (including WEP) as long as I leave
Broadcast enabled at the access point. However, if I
disable broadcast to hide my network from outsiders the WUSB11/XP machine can no longer see the network (my other machine using linksys wireless PC card and Win 2000 works whether Broadcast is enabled or disabled.) I actually tried using both XP Home and XP Pro - same results.

I read an article in the linksys knowledge base about
"Securing Your Wireless LAN" which mentioned a problem
of XP machines not seeing the network if Broadcast was
disabled because of the XP zero config utility. The
article said something about manually entering your
SSID, but that didn't seem to work.

So, I called linksys tech support. I called 3 times and got 3
different answers after waiting 10-30 minutes:
1) that's interesting, let us check and we'll get back
to you - of course nobody ever got back to me
(although the guy was very helpful on the phone in
getting my WEP enabled, just not with the Broadcast
issue)
2) you have to reinstall the WUSB11 using linksys
utilities instead of the XP zero config utilities - I
tried, but didn't have detailed enough instructions to
get it to work so went back to the zero config install
3) it cannot be fixed.

So, at this point I still don't know if the WUSB11 can be used with XP Broadcast disabled at the access point - I just know that nobody at linksys tech support can give me a straight answer.

I have a Linksys Wireless Router with which I am quite pleased. Also, I have a Linksys 4-port wired router which has performed flawlessly since the day I bought it almost two years ago.

However, when I plugged in the Linksys USB adaptor, it simply didn't work. That is, when I physically plugged-in the USB cable to my laptop (HP Pavilion running Win98SE), absolutely nothing happened. I did the same on my home-built ABit-based Win2000 server, with the same result.

Disappointed, I returned the Linksys for a Netgear USB and it installed and performs flawlessly.

I have also had bad experience with Linksys' PCMCIA wireless adaptors...the antenna seems to be of poor quality resulting in horrific range (lost connection ~100 ft in an open-air office!). My guess is that Linksys has nailed their larger WIFI products, but has not maintained good quality control on their smaller WIFI offerings.

By the way, I have NO interoperability problems with my Netgear+Linksys wireless network.