Two very minor caveats: drivers are on diskette only - if like me your laptop doesn't have a floppy, you'll need to burn a CD to transfer the files; and the driver isn't yet validated for use with WinXP but it works fine (I'm writing this on XP now).

Possibly the easiest hardware install ever, and a dream after using Intel's appalling Anypoint system.

Good reception anywhere in my house.
I have SMC Wireless router and we all share DSL connection.

Perfect. You can't get any better. I am VERY happy.

USE:
This card operates at very high speeds and is surprisingly unaffected by interference. No matter how far I roam from the SMC 7004 wireless barricade (which this card communicates with) the connectivity is exceptional.

I live in a moderately large condominium that is part of a huge building with dozens of units. This building is a VERY unfriendly place for anything wireless. In fact, my cordless phones have always had some static problems. It should be noted that these are all high grade phones and I have phones for every bandwidth (analog, 900 mhz, 2.4 ghz). Despite this unfriendly environment, the card remains unaffected and works great. Also important, it does not interfear with my 2.4 gig phones.

TECHNICAL SUPPORT.
Their technical support people are friendly and knowledgable. The tollfree number is great, and their email support is good too. Sometimes the wait can be pretty long to get ahold of one of them, but it is a toll free number, and so at least it is on their dime and not yours.

INSTALLATION:
This card is very easy to install. In fact, the first time I installed it I thought something went wrong because it was so easy I didn't think anything had happened. In fact, the card was fully installed and working great.

There is one caveat though. If you install this card on your system and then upgrade to Windows XP, you could have trouble. As of now (11/9/01), if you want this card to work you will need to do a full install of XP and not just an upgrade install. Then when you install the drivers you should be fine. Frankly, I recommend this anyways, as when I did the ugrade install I had problems with several programs that disapeared when I went back and did the full installation.

Bottom line: Great card, solid customer service, and easy installation.

- Maximum range not quite as good as Airport card on Apple laptop

Then I went on trying to intall it into Win 2000 which will not work. I tried downloading the newest software and utility to no avail. Everytime i call tech support, i wait on hold for 30 minutes and when a rep eventually picks up, they are rude, and no help. One of reps that handled my call, i could hear them munching chips down their throats and not caring of helping you. All that guy wanted me to do was to move the folder of where the downloaded drivers were (on my desktop) to the root directory and had me try reinstalling. Another rep just suggested to reinstall Win 2000, which i did many times even before calling customer rep. It is pitiful that SMC has such bad customer reps.

I have received the card for about 10 days now and still not able to get it to work in Win 2000.

I also purchased the barricade wireless router w/printer server and that have been working great with my desktop and wireless laptop using Win ME. If you plan to use it with Win 2000, don't even bother buying this card.

The only complaint I have is that it severely reduces the amount of life I get out of my battery on my laptop. Even with powersaving mode on, when I'm not plugged in I get about half the work-time I otherwise would.

First the router: my intent was to couple the router to my cable modem, then wire this to an iMac. The box says it is Mac compatible, but there is absolutely no documentation on how to configure the Mac to use it. No problem, I thought, I can just download it from their site. Once downloaded, the documentation was in .doc format. Hmm - I can't read this with AppleWorks. So I downloaded it to my laptop. After about 30 minutes of struggling to get the documentation, I discovered that it offers no useful advice to Mac owners anyway. So I called customer support. After waiting for approx. 30 minutes, the support rep was nice, however, after trying several things, suggested the router was broken and I should return it. We tried several more changes and finally got it to work. It was not broken - just hard to configure.

Next the PC card. This was to be loaded into my Sony laptop. I had hoped that their documentation for PCs would more helpful. Not so. Again - off to customer service. After nearly a 30 minute wait, the rep finally got on the phone. This time, no matter what we tried, we could not get the card to work. Again he suggested it was broken and I should return it. This I have done.

Finally, the USB adaptor. No luck making it work with the laptop. And the included configuration utility would not even execute on the laptop. I thought that perhaps there was a problem with the laptop, so I tried loading this onto a Compaq desktop. The driver loaded ok, but the install program for the configuration utility failed. (Explains why it would not work on the laptop...) Again, back to the SMC website. I downloaded the configuration utility, installed it, and it seemed to work. The utility showed that I had good link quality. However, after numerous attempts to get the adaptor to reset the IP address, I gave up. I waited on customer service for 40 minutes and gave up there too. I would add that I have tried to reach customer service about 5 times, I have only successfully reached them twice.

So, in my opinion, these products have VERY poor documentation, terrible customer service, and when you do reach the rep, they are as likely as not to tell you that the product is broken.

A postscript: a suggestion from their rep. to reload the firmware on the router may have helped. Once this was done, AND we loaded the gateway and IP addresses in the laptop and PC TCP/IP settings, things starting working. I would add that their customer support reps are very nice. It is too bad it takes so long to speak with one...