Customer Reviews

Cisco-Linksys PCMPC200 EtherFast 10/100 CardBus PC Card

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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I can't believe how cheap this card is. Just a year ago this was selling for around $160. The high rating was for price and performance.

I will make one caution. This product has a dongle--a cable to connect the card to a network Cat 5 patch cable. These things can get damaged easily if you are not gentle with them.

A better designed card, sticks out of the laptop a half and inch and connects directly to a Cat 5 cable. This will cost you a lot more, but it is more robust and you don't have to keep track of the dongle.

Even better is a wireless connection to your network--that will cost a lot more, and will not allow to to connect to someone else's network if they don't have a transceiver on their network.

At this price I would purchase this product since I have a 10/100 hub and love Linksys products. At the present my slower 10BaseT network card is still functional, so I will hold off a while yet.

The price is the more important factor, and the speed is second.

The other Linksys laptop product is slightly cheaper is the Linksys PCMPC100 EtherFast 10/100 Card. This is listed at a full duplex card, but after reading about this card, I think that is a typo.

The above listed card is definately a full duplex card will give you as much as twice the performance of a half duplex card if used with a full duplex hub.

In reading the reviews of the different linksys pcmcia network carts they all have the same theme: Great card,bad connector! I installed this card and travel frequently. I can say first hand that the cable is way to fragile! Linksys now makes a 10/100 PCMCIA card with an intrigal female port connector as part of the card. No cable at all! I think this is the better way to go and its about the same price. I installed one and love it.

I wasn't sure what to expect with this card since it was priced so much cheaper than any other products of it kind (32bit 10/100 PCMCIA, what i found was a great product. I have had no problems with this device and the speed is amazing. I highly recommend it!

This card is gr8 ! Very fast. It's got a dongle (coupler) though ! But works gr8. A+++++++++++++

Works with Windows ME !!! Plug in the disk and drivers are installed, takes less than 5 mins !

CAT 5 Cable OBVIOUSLY not included

I'v bought this card 18 month ago and it is still a great and fast product. I use it on a Toshiba 4000CDT with Windows 2000 Professional installed. I use hibernation and go off and on the network. The only problem which I came across and I think is driver related is that when I hibernate, start up again networkless and then hibernate and return to the network the card is not functioning. To resolve the problem I release and insert the card while running and everything works again - not a big problem.

This card offers a 32 bit cardbus interface and full duplex 100Mbps. A great steal if you ask me. Installation was a cinch with my Win 98 SE notebook. It is marginally faster than my previous Linksys PCMCIA ethernet/modem card and seems to produce less heat.

Some grouses though. Linksys's website does not provide up to date drivers. The drivers on the disk provided were actually of a later version than those on the website. I don't suppose I can expect any driver upgrades anytime soon, so OS upgraders Beware!

You pay for what you get though! You get a great card that is reliable and does its job just fine.

I like the card a lot, but the dongle that it comes with is pretty bad...one of them broke within a couple months, and I had to return the whole card. I'm on my second one, and already the dongle has broken so that the activity lights do not function...I expect that sooner or later it will lose all functionality (again).

What a shame because otherwise it's a good product.

I bought this network card at the same time as I bought the Linksys 4 Port Cable/DSL Router/HUB figuring I wouldn't have any compatibility issues. I was right. It's easy to install in your standard laptop PCMCIA/Cardbus slot. Windows 95 autosenses it. You load the drivers from a floppy. Reboot, and you're up and running. It took all of about 10 minutes, including re-boot time.

Performance is no problem, as it (and the router) autosenses the correct speed to send at. On a fast network (10Mbits; which is 10x faster than most broadband connections) it goes fast, on a faster network (100Mbits), it goes faster. For the money, you just can't go wrong.

There was a bit of advertising trickery on the part of Linksys - they changed the chip used in this card, added a 'v2' of the model number on the card itself, and shipped new windows drivers. This means that Linux (and possibly other operating systems) claim to support this card, based on the model number, but actually don't. Well, at least, not yet. I was able to get this card working (and working well) under linux with drivers from www.scyld.com (although, it wasn't easy).

I had no problems under windows 98se with this card at all - I can't even remember if I had to use the shipped drivers (win98se may have known about this card already).

Beyond the model change, this card is a good card. Affordable, stable, and very strong for a 'dongle' card.

I did e-mail Linksys once, when I thought my 'dongle' connection was bad (it wasn't), and they e-mailed back in 2 days, which is pretty good these days for technical support. Creative Labs, that multimedia giant continues to keep me waiting for an RMA CD-RW drive after 2 MONTHS now...

I got the card and used it for a year, it worked wonderfully untill the connection pin on the dongle bent, I couldn't bend it back properly and had to get a replacement.