Max range is about 150 foot in the clear, and about half that through walls and such. I'm sure I could get better range but I would be in my neighbors yard, I don't see me needing that kind of range..... my point is that it works great indoors at my house, 2 story with 4 walls still no problems.

I feel for the money I spent I got more than what I paid for, these days that's a bargain.

The bad: If you're using Windows XP and want to do anything but browse the Internet, return this adapter immediately! It is NOT compatible with the Wireless Zero Config service in XP. Every 60 seconds, it drops the connection and reconnects in about 5 seconds. So this adapter is fairly useless for online games, streaming mp3's from another pc on the network, SSH connections, or anything else that requires constant connections.

The ugly: It seems as if NetGear has completely abandoned this product! The software download page makes you guess which driver is the right one, and it hasn't been updated in forever... Maybe there's just not a way to fix it...

My verdict: If you just want to browse the web, and you can pick one up cheap, go for it. But with Linksys adapters selling for the same price, I can't see why you would.

Netgear would get 5 stars if they just made a quality XP driver
available. This may not be possible because the firware cannot
be upgraded to the WZC MS standard AFAIK.

The setup was alright - the performance, was not. I plugged it in, Windows refused to recognize it. Rebooted, finally recognized it, installed the software. No response. Couldn't get anything working. Tried installing the other one - same results. Rebooted router, finally I got wireless running. The MA101, however, I saw very poor results. The adapter was no more than 40-50 feet away from the router, yet my signal and link strength barely reached 6%.

The signal constantly dropped, and the only way to get both signals above 6% was by holding it straight over the top of my head. From there I was able to get a little less than 20%. Tried all different positions on my desk, on top of my monitor, etc but to no avail. Tried all different antenna positions to no avail either. Plugged in the Speedstream and got a constant 46%/33%.

Netgear's networking hardware has a great reputation and I believe that this adapter, in short distances with line of sight between wireless components, could have the ability to perform outstandingly; however, if this is not the case for your network, you are much better off purchasing a different USB adapter.

The signal reception is very good -- on a par with the Lucent (now Proxim) Orinoco Gold PC card I normally use. I think that it may even be a little better. The hammock in the back yard will be the best test for this.

The out of the box experience was not as good however. First, the drivers which shipped with the unit were back-level and I had to download new ones from Netgear. This was no big deal but even the new driver and configuration tools don't accept ASCII WEP keys. It's nice that the MA101 can use 128 bit WEP but it's very easy to make a mistake in converting the key to HEX and, of course, I did. So the card appeared to work but wouldn't lease an IP address from my router. This was a very simple problem to correct, but it was still frustrating.

A lot of articles have been written recently about how most wireless networks aren't secured at all. WEP is a weak lock, but it keeps the honest people honest. Unfortunately, the configuration tool Netgear uses -- which is not actually Netgear's but is supplied by the chipset vendor -- is not friendly to casual users who might otherwise implement better security. B00005B9XJ

Plugged an ISP-provided DSL modem into the Base Station and configured the Base Station using the Mac. (Had no success with Apple's Airport Admin config software for the PC.)

Then plugged in the MA101 USB on the PC, installed the software from CD, and configured the settings to match the Mac security.
I got strong signal strength and throughput from both the MA101 and the Airport Card in a three story house.
40-bit WEP works fine. 128-bit is occasionally little buggy, requiring me to temporarily reset both platforms to 40-bit.

Haven't tried setting up file sharing yet, but will attempt the USB printer connection on the Base Station. (Caution, check Apple.com/airport for list if approved USB printers that will work with the Base Station. Also, this USB printer feature supposedly requires the Mac to run OS 10.2.3+)

I bought it in a local store because they did not have Linksys products available - I was anxious to get my home network active but at the same time, skeptical to a brand other than Linksys. After checking the return policy I bought the products (this one plus the Cable/DSL Wireless Router MR814) and I'm glad that I did!. Just FYI, I have an iMAC and a PC Dell, both sharing a cable modem conexion.