Customer Reviews

Belkin N1 Wireless Notebook Card

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I bought this Belkin N1 Notebook Card because I had also bought the Belkin N1 Wireless Router. My thinking was that by matching the two, I would maximize my wireless performance. But, to my surprise, performance isn't significantly better than that of my wife's HP laptop which came with Wireless G support. If this was the only issue, I would be OK with the product. However, I have been a bit frustrated with its other problems. The card has problems recovering from situations where the laptop goes into standby mode and windows goes into hybernation. When the laptop resumes windows operation, the card is stuck and does not resume operation (both of the blue lights on the card are on solid). In some situations this can totally hang the laptop and there is no recourse but to power down the laptop and reboot it from scratch. In other situations, I have been able to disable and re-enable the network connection associated with the card and things recover. At any rate, it is a pain either way. I'm surprised Belkin has not addressed this obvious software defect... some basic functional testing would have easily found this problem. I have also seen a few times where my laptop has hung while cruising the internet since installing this card... I think there has been others that have reported this issue too.

I have been using this card for about a month now.

I read reviews of the Belkin N-1 networking family and was scared to leave my pre-N system behind. However, my Pre-N router died and true to their word Belkin promptly replaced it. At this point I was willing to invest in a Belkin's N-1 laptop card just to see how it performed. In fact I bought 2. I installed one card in a couple of year old Dell which is in an upstairs location while the router is downstairs. The laptop reports a very good to excellent signal amd "300 mbps" - it is noticable faster in pulling files from other network devices. The other laptop is a bit older Gateway. It too is upstairs, directly overhead from the router. It does not report as strong of a signal but seems to get the job done and reports faster than "108 mbps" and sometimes "300 mbps". While I have not experimented with placing the stronger signaled Dell in the location of the Gateway to see how it performs, I suspect that the difference is attributable to the Gateway being older technology.

The greatest challenge I had with setting up the network was with security. I succeeded with the security mode of WPA/WPA-2 Personal (PSK); Authentication of WPA/PSK; Encryption Technique of AES (I could not establish connection between my computers using TKP Encryption Technique).

In summary, setting up the network took some effort and familiarity with networks - how to set and change properties in the network connection both on the laptops and the browser interface with the router. Once the network was established its performance has been reliable and faster. All-in-all I would not make the investment to surf-the-net but if you access larger files, like photographs, from another computer or network drive, you will notice the difference - if the bandwidth of the hardware you are using is on par with the N-1 capabilities. To make this come true for me I upgraded the NIC in my computers which are hardwired to the router to 1Gb technology. The upgrade was worthwhile given that my network drive, where photographs are stored is capable of a transfer rate of 250 mbps and my zip drive is USB 2.0. In other words, all of my hardware is capable of faster transfer rates.

I got this notebook card on a good sale and thought myself very fortunate, but nothing could have been further from the truth. The first computer that I try to use this card in was a five-year-old Toshiba laptop running Windows XP. After about four hours of trying to get this card to work, I finally gave up and called the Belkin Tech support. They were a very typical tech support, and pass the buck on to my Internet provider. After an hour of working with my Internet provider's tech support. He concluded that the fault lie with this Belkin wireless notebook card. I think called Belkin Tech support back and explain to them the conclusions that my Internet service provider had come to. The Blinking tech-support I spoke to promptly blamed the problem on my wireless router. Not wanting to argue the point. I've then called up my wireless router tech support and after about 45 minutes of troubleshooting, they concluded that the router was working flawlessly. I called blinking tech-support back a third time, of course this was after a three-day weekend, and after an hour and 15 minutes of changing settings on my computer and my wireless router, we finally got the card working. It didn't last long though. It worked for about a week and then one morning, when the computer was booted up the router would never connect again. I personally spent about six hours tinkering with the card and speaking with Belkin tech-support before I finally got fed up and gave the card up for a loss. I gave my brother-in-law a chance to try to get it to work. After over 10 hours of work and contacting tech support for many companies, including Verizon, Linksys and Belkin he gave up. I tried installing the card in a brand-new Toshiba Qosmio. I could never get the card to work or connect to a well-established home wireless network. It would see that the wireless network was there, and it would ask for a WEP key but it would never connect. It was very frustrating, to say the least. I highly suggest, no matter how good of deal this card may seem, go with some other brand of wireless notebook card and save yourself many hours of frustration and pointless calls to numerous tech-support services.

It does not deliver. Range is so low do not bother. In this case "N1" stands for "not this one."

This product has major bugs and Belkin knows it. If you are upgrading from another card or Belkin product, it will not work. An attempted upgrade from a Belkin Pre-N card cut my throughput in half (from 108mbps to 54). The N1 will not uninstall and Belkin customer service cannot fix the problem without an engineer going into the System Registry on my computer. I've spent hours on this and am worse off than before the "upgrade." Belkin indicated it would be 2 days before an engineer can call me back to attempt a work around so the card can be uninstalled without crashing my wireless network. The product should never have been released. STAY AWAY.

Bought both the N1 router and the cards. Connection would come and go (mostly go), but when it was connected the range and speed, even with the N1 cards, was no better than standard g. Telephone customer service was typical for what has sadly become common in the consumer electronics industry. After upgrading the firmware, only to have the router continue to drop signals, I performed a hard reboot, and then it died for good. Thankfully, all of this occurred while I could still return it, so I was only out the eight hours or so I used to try to get the thing working. While this product does get some good reviews (particularly on CNET), which was why I bought it, it simply did not work for me. Not sure if that was due to all of the variables involved in home networks, or if some of the multiple versions of the N1 (mine was ver. 2000) perform better than others. I have since purchased and installed the NetGear RangeMax products and they are working flawlessly with the range and speed I was looking for.

Well, first off, I'm not sure if it's the card, or the N1 router itself, but ever since I installed the new N1 serious wireless in my home, I have had nothing but problems and poor connectivity. They clam that the N1 has extended range, I went back to my Pre N wireless and got twice the range and way better reliebility then with the N1. The concept seems good and the descriptions are great, but i can't say I feel the product is what they say it is.

I have Windows XP Home edition and I installed the wireless adapter software with no problems. However, after buying both the new Belkin N router and adapter at the same time, I was unable to connect the adapter to my wireless connection - the adapter wouldn't even recognize my connection. The few times it miraculously found the connection and connected the service would last seconds, at best.

I called tech support and after spending 30 minutes on the phone, they were unable to help establish a connection and I eventually returned the adapter.

However, as the other reviewers have mentioned, the Belkin N Router works perfectly - I have had no problems connecting it to my other, older wireless adapter.

I purchased this for a Linux Ubuntu Notebook. In Ubuntu this worked by just plugging the card into the computer and setting up my security. The WIFI reception is excellent and my upload / download speeds rival a cable connection. I could not be more pleased. I will buy Belkin products again from Amazon.

I bought the Belkin N1 wireless router and this notebook card in the hopes of obtaining a usable signal several rooms away from the router. The router worked flawlessly, and the notebook card gave me a weak / intermittent signal where I wanted to use it. This was however an improvement over my previous 802.11b Linksys wireless router that gave me no signal at all at this location.
After about an hour of use, I got the 'blue screen of death' on my new Dell dual core laptop that warned that a serious error occurred and Windows was halted to prevent further damage. It further warned that if I recently installed new hardware I should reboot and uninstall the hardware. I rebooted, Windows came back, and I uninstalled the notebook card. I called Belkin tech service to report the problem, but the rep just kept trying to get me to reinstall the card. Nope. Too risky. I'll return the card.
By the way, when you install the card, Windows warns that the product is not Windows logo certified. Belkin's instructions state that you should ignore this warning and install anyway.
I hope Belkin addresses the issue with a firmware update and gets Windows logo certification.