Write a review for the NETGEAR WG311 54 Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter - network adapter here!
Always been a fan of netgear for their easy to use software - which is fine but it disabled fast user switching on the XP PC that it was installed in. No big problem you might say but the PC was for my parents who aren't experienced users so it would've been another thing to slow them down. Might have been down to something else conflicting but I could'nt find anything, removed the netgear software altogether and just installed drivers and they now use windows wireless utility with no issues.- Hardware is robust and does the job. Slightly on the expensive end of the market but then again 'You get what you pay for' good quality and the name that you trust.
I have always found NETGEAR kit to be robust and reliable and the WG311 is no exception. It's also very easy to fit and the instructions are clear and non-technical.
At nearly £30 it is at the expensive end of the market, but you could waste a lot of time by buying cheaper cards and spending a lot of time getting them to work.
I have found the card works well with other manufacturers equipment and Windows XP picks it up immediately when installing (remember to install the software first!)
Got this yesterday and installed and set up in about ten minutes. For those who like that kind of detail my PC is an IBM P3 1800 with 512RAM etc etc . Early days yet but signal strength is fine despite my router being two floors away and the other side of two brick walls and a stone chimney wall - not ideal i know but its the only place i can cover both the house and garden from.
Decided to set up a simple ad-hoc setup with a couple of these cards. Arrived super quick and were installed easily enough. Then I spent a couple of frustrating days trying to get the two computers to talk to each other. Finally I ignored the netgear manual advice about not letting windows help with the settings and ticked the boxes. Set up one static IP address on the main machine and bingo everything jupmed into life. Works fine now but signal strength across the landing is variable so not sure how it would cope with a bigger distance. or a proper wall!
In my 266 MHz Pentium II system it started to to work but then crumbled before my eyes. Despite sustained tech support from Netgear, it could not be resurrected. By contrast, the Linksys WMP54G card works acceptably (if a bit flakily) into my Netgear DG834G router.
It worked for a while with XP, then refused to connect, despite being able to see the router, according to the list of networks. It does work under Windows 98. I contacted Netgear technical support, but no response. Easier to just buy a cheap and cheerful version - I used to think Negear sold quality, but no more
Well ..it was easy to install and set up. It all went downhill from there on in . The card regularly looses connectivity even though its interface tells me its still connected. Sending back.
If you need to use this with linux, don't bother. It uses the windows drivers via ndiswrapper, which is a pain and prevents you using a lot of the features.
It also seem to have difficulty connecting in windows.
Having looked on the web, it seems these cards apparently need PCI 2.2. Nice of negear/dabs to let me know before i bought them :->. For people using machines that are not "state of the art", the following may or may not be of interest.......
I have 2 PC's that i wanted to connect to a Netgear wireless router....
The first machine has an ABIT KG7 motherboard running XP, when trying to install the drivers for the wireless card i get the usual message telling me that the drivers aren't approved by microsoft, then a "data not found" after error installing the driver.
The other machine has an Abit BX6v2 motherboard (medievil i know), and will not even make it to the bios screen after power up, when the card is installed.
Why don't Dabs/Netgear tells us that this won't work with non PCI 2.2 complience slots which wont be fitted to more 'mature' PCs. Very disappointed especially since can't return it for this reason!
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