| Linksys WUSB11 Wireless-B USB Network Adapter v4 |
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Model: WUSB11
Brand: Linksys
Manufacturer: Linksys
Average Rating: 
(submit your review here)
Total Reviews: 360
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: Windows
Form factor: External
Hardware platform: PC
Data link protocol: IEEE 802.11b
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| Features: |
Connects desktop or laptop computers to your wireless network
High-speed transfer rate of up to 11 Mbps
Operating range of up to 300 feet indoors and 1,500 feet outdoors
Compatible with Microsoft Windows 98SE, Me, 2000, and XP
Easy plug-and-play installation |
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| Description: |
| The Linksys WUSB11 USB Wireless Network Adapter is perfect if you're looking to start a wireless network, or just want an easy way to connect to an existing one. With this external adapter you can access a wireless 802.11b from any notebook or desktop's USB port. Free driver/firmware upgrades Free technical support - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (for North America only) Includes - USB cable & driver utility CD-ROM |
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| User Reviews (360 total): |
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Works Incredibly Well With TIVO Series 2, April 3, 2004
By unknown
The Linksys WUSB11 wireless network adapter worked flawlessly within 10 minutes of my inserting the USB cable in the back of my TIVO Series 2 DVR. The first thing I did was contact TIVO to find if my Linksys' G speed router would be compatible with the WUSB11's B speed. I was assured by the TIVO customer representative that the WUSB11 would work with TIVO even though my router was a G. Well, all I did was plug in the WUSB11, follow directions as offered by TIVO and there was nothing else to do. It just worked! Out of the box, it just worked!! The reasons I bought the Linksys router and USB network adapter were two-fold: 1) Two computer Geeks I know recommeded Linksys... My remarks in this review are related to hooking up the WUSB11 to a TIVO Series 2 device... The WUSB11 is totally compatible with my TIVO Series 2. No doubt about it.
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WUSB11 v2.8 DOES work with TiVo, March 16, 2004
By Bill Mounts (Andover, MA United States)
Folks, I got a new WUSB11 v2.8 for Christmas, and I had read all of the reviews concerning the limitations of v2.8. Needless to say, I was really bummed that I was not going to be able to get TiVo on-line. However, all you need to do is logon to your account at tivo.com, tell them that you have a WUSB11 v2.8, and they will push you an update to the TiVo software. It took a couple of days, but after they pushed the new software, I was up and running. No more phone cords, and now I have the Home Media option as well.As for only 4 stars, I'm having a heck of a time getting one of these up and running on an old Win98 machine that I have. I've followed the directions with no luck...
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When it works it's great, but frustrating when it's down, March 12, 2004
By tech guy (Saratoga Springs, New York United States)
This adapter is the most frustrating piece of hardware I've ever come across! Beware when using with WinXP....very touchy! Sometimes it works perfectly. Other times it won't connect to the Internet even though it is receiving a perfect signal from the router, which is also Linksys. My Netgear card that I use in my laptop has always worked fine and was cheaper than this lightweight piece of plastic. I would recommend passing on this unless you don't mind spending hours browsing the Linksys website trying to solve your XP compatibility issues. Ack!
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Very flakey device, works...sometimes., March 6, 2004
By Alain (GLENDALE, CA USA)
Let me start by saying that I have the version 2.2 of this device, so hopefully the later versions fixed some serious problems.This device works, some of the time. I used it about 30 feet from a Linksys WAP11 device, and it gave me 100% signal strength. Throughout the day, that signal strength would jump radically from 100% to 10% to 0% to 50%. It is extremely flakey, and very very frustrating. I replaced it with a Linksys WET11 device which has a bigger antenna, and so far has worked like a charm 100% of the time. I am in love with the WET11. It's one-time configuration can be daunting to the layman, but once configured, you can connect it to any ethernet equipped device, and not need any other drivers. Do not get the WUSB11 if you can afford the WET11.
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Great solid product!, March 2, 2004
By Read Too Much (BOISE, IDAHO United States)
I bought one of these nifty devices just to check it out and it worked fine on XP. It was easy to install. In fact, I liked it so much that I bought another for an older ME machine. I was not disappointed with this product, even though it cost more than comparable wireless USB adapters.
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good adapter disaster utility software, February 27, 2004
By unknown
it's the best adapter that i've tried so far. it picked up the network instantly and it didn't lose connection upon restart or wakeup of windows, which had been the problem w/ an smc and microsoft adapter. give it 4 star is b/c of the utility software that came w/ it. it's simply a horrer. first after double click on the install.exe it just flashed, and didn't show the typical installation screen. then i found it in the "all programs" menu. but when i tried to start it it claimed that a file was missing, wlan.ini. i copied the file from the cd to the installed folder. the utility program started. but, it insisted that it couldn't find an access point even though it's connected! turning off windows wireless zero configuration didn't help. somebody had said that simply forget about the utility program and use windows to manage it. he's quite right. w/ one caveat though - every few minutes windows would get confused, disconnect me and say that "there's more than one network available". uncheck "use windows to configure my wireless networks" seemed to have solved this problem (i did assign ip etc. manually in the first place).
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Buyer be aware, February 23, 2004
By D. Shin (CA United States)
I've been on the phone over four hours with customer support and I still have problems with this wireless device. About once a day, the wireless connection disappears for no reason and I cannot reconnect unless I reboot. Customer support has informed me to download a new driver from the website, but it still does not work. Then they suggested that I reinstall Windows XP (a very long process for those who are unaware) and it still does not work. I am installing this wireless device on a new computer that I bought from one of the top two computer manufacturers so I know the problem does not exist with the computer. Please do your research before purchasing this device.
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Perfectly Wonderful, February 23, 2004
By unknown
We just got this a few months ago, and it works perfect! I've been happy with it, and have had no problems with it. The router is on the second floor, and this adapter is 3 floors below in the basement, and we have never had a reception problem at all. I recomend it to anyone I see talking about networking their computers.
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good stuff, February 21, 2004
By bobsterdc (Washington, DC)
This worked very well with my Series2 Tivo. Just remmeber that you have to update your Tivo software first (over dialup, whick took 90 minutes) to 5.1b BEFORE the Tivo will recognize the adapter.
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For those having problem with WEP, February 21, 2004
By uncle_red (TX, USA)
For those having problem with WEP, why don't you give it a try to use HEX instead of ASCII. As far as I know, there are Network Key incompatibility issues among wireless network adapters and access points of different brand names. This usually can be taken care of by using HEX in the Network Key. I understand that this could be a little bit troublesome. But you'll just have to set it up once.
The only reason that I didn't give it 5-star is because sometimes my pc could not recognize the device at boot-up and I had to connect/disconnect the usb plug. But this sympton seems went away since I updated the misc. motherboard drivers last month.
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Worked Great With TiVo, February 20, 2004
By thelordofgoofy (Anderson, SC USA)
Set up was a breeze and everything works great. Two TiVo's in the house and had to hook the one up in the bedroom to the network. Plugged it in, rebooted the TiVo, entered the network information and bam... No cables. Very Very Easy.
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Bad software, QA, and support, February 20, 2004
By Shane (Boise, Idaho)
My installation came back telling me I was missing files. Tech support walked me through uninstall and reinstall -- which as a software engineer I already tried several times. Finally she said it was bad and I needed to exchange it. I knew it wasn't but figured I'd give it a try anyway -- wasting my time and their money. Same problem with new one, er rather, that wasn't the problem in the first place. I checked that my system was current (win2k SP4). Tried again. Missing files. Try to call tech support... 1 hour and 18 minutes later STILL NO ANSWER. Every 30 seconds a "thank you for your call" message repeats, ad nauseum. So I searched the online support http://www.linksys.com/support. No results turned up for a search on "missing files". I tried all combinations from the error message that I thought might return some results. Nothing. Surely this can't be the first time ever this error has popped up?! Not to mention the typo in the error message! I will never buy linksys again. I am taking both units back tomorrow and trying NetGear.T Shane Bostick
Boise, Idaho
tbostick78@yahoo.com
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Horrible! Don't buy!, February 16, 2004
By unknown
Don't waste your money on this piece of garbage!!! I've had so many problems with this things it's ridiculous! Despite calling customer service three times, this this just doesn't work properly. It constantly finds "new networks" around my neighborhood and kicks me offline each time. I'm throwing mine away and buying from a different company! My friend has the same problem with his. Also, the User Manual is completely useless!!! Stay away from Linksys
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Almost worked with xp, February 13, 2004
By joehult
I had it going for about 36 hours. Unfortunately when I returned after 4 hours, it was unable to send. Yet I was able to ping my computer using both a computer on the same network, and even using my cell phone. But not even my firewall was able to detect any outbound activity. So I returned it.Some other problems I found was xp seemed to lose the card, and using detect new hardware would not even detect it. I ended up having to uninstall and reinstall. There are just way too many issues that were similiar to when I tried version 2.6 with 98.
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It is NOT COMPATIBLE WITH XP -NO CUSTOMER SERVICE, January 6, 2004
By djs38 (Atlanta GA)
If you know the workings of computers intimately, this might work for you. It is NOT easy to use this adapter with XP. I spent 7 days trying to reach Linksys through online and phoneline - never got through. I used every technique in their support pages and it still didn't work. XP keeps defaulting, you have to disconnect integrated components, reconfigure settings and change channels and that's just the tip of the iceberg- it finally worked for about 10 minutes then crashed. I had two PC's working beautifully using NetGear's adapter but the third PC that I tried to add to my network with this Linksys adapter - forget it! I feel like they owe me money for my frustration.
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Good device, some Windows 2000 frustration, December 31, 2003
By Matt (Illinois)
Summary:
1) If you get v3.0 of this adapter, it works great in XP with the built-in "Wireless Zero Config"
2) If you get v3.0 of this adapter and you're having trouble in Windows 2000, read below:I had been wrestling with a problem with the WUSB11 v3.0 adapter for the last 3 days. I was finding that it first worked in Windows 2K, then in XP, then never again in 2K. The behavior was that the WLAN monitor kept saying that the device was "not installed" or "inactive" even though Windows clearly saw the adapter (it showed up as installed correctly in the Device Manager). I noticed that I was getting an error message in the Win2K Event Log from the PCANDIS5 service that "path is invalid". The registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\PCANDIS5\ImagePath had a directory that did not exist! It was "\??\C:\PROGRA~1\WUSB11~1\PCANDIS5.SYS". This appears to perhaps be an old location of PCANDIS5 maybe in an older version of the driver. I changed the value to "\??\C:\WINNT\system32\PCANDIS5.SYS", rebooted, and the WUSB11 works perfectly now on all my Win2K machines!! I hope this helps someone else out and prevents them from having to spend 3 or more days on this problem. Besides this, this USB adapter seems to be very good.
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XP and this Linksys USB just don't get along, December 31, 2003
By unknown
After struggling with the installation setup for a day and waiting for the Technical support, I finally went on the Linksys support website via my wired LAN connection. The Knowledge database indicated that this device has some technical issues with XP and requires "try and error". I have another XP at home with D-Link PCI wireless adapter and it is working just fine. So I decided to not spend more time to troubleshoot this one anymore and return the adapter instead.
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5 Minute Setup, December 25, 2003
By unknown
I set this up on a PC running XP in less than 5 minutes. Just follow the installation directions on the card for XP. In summary, plug in the USB cord and the XP installation wizard asks for the CD to install the driver. Next you type some requested information on security settings and you are up and running.I'm using a Linksys wireless access point located about 50 feet away on a lower floor. This is a lot easier than running CAT5 cable all over your house. Very good connection speed. Great product, highly recommended.
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Is this thing on?, December 17, 2003
By webbr1 (Powell, OH USA)
Bought this product about 3 months ago. I got it to work for about a week. It worked on Win2K and XP, on laptops and PCs. Then one day it started having problems communicating with my wireless router. Keep in mind, I have a top of the line WRT54G (802.11b/g) Linksys Wireless router. So you would think it would certainly be compatible with the same brand Linksys WUSB11 802.11b. Well maybe, but it hasn't made up it's mind yet. I am getting "can't associate with access point" in the WLAN "Moniter" software, despite having no WEP encryption and SSID broadcast enabled on the WRT54G. The WRT54G router is squawking all default settings and NO WEP (yet), and the WUSB11 is set up to accept everything just as the WRT54G broadcasts it...BUT... All I get now is "cannot associate with access point" message in the WLAN "Moniter". It would appear to me that since the WRT54G can communicate with any other wireless device I have, that the WUSB11 has decided it's not talking with my router any more, no matter what laptop or PC it's installed on. It is so frustrating because the WUSB11 will see my wireless home network/SSID just fine (considering it's only 10-20 feet away in my apartment at any given time it should work darnit!) - even after I hit Refresh in the "moniter" console several times. It's when I hit "Connect" that I get the fateful "cannot associate with access point" again. Hmmmm.... Linksys also spelled "Moniter" incorrectly by the way, not like I care so much about that though. It would appear that this device is prone to unpredictable behavior, especially in the clear absence of any RF interference on the 2.4 band, and given the fact that I can put the WUSB11 device within 5 feet of the WRT54G router - and it STILL won't work now. This irritates me to no end because I am a computing and networking professional, so you would think this wouldn't be a problem for me...well the joke's on me, and this device and/or the "Moniter" software certainly is far from perfect.LINKSYS, *WHAT* kind of product is this? Will it ever work again? It cost me $52.00, please tell me it will! 1 star for the fact that it worked, for a while. 1 star for the fact that I like the WRT54G router, so I'll throw that in because I'm feeling hospitable.
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Works great with XP, December 12, 2003
By unknown
Installation was a breeze. I got a brand new machine with XP home. The install instructions for 2000, ME and 98 are different and XP are a bit distinct but both easy. I had it running and connected to my home entwork in less than five minutess. I get great reception and am very happy.
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