Customer Reviews

Cisco-Linksys WPC54G Wireless-G Notebook Adapter

5 star:		(151)
4 star:		(60)
3 star:		(32)
2 star:		(33)
1 star:		(59)

 

 

This is a review I wrote for the router hub and the PC Card. I had already submitted it for the hub and am submitting it here also for the card. The entire review is relevant to both parts of this system. One thing I forgot to mention was that I had called Dell to see what they had available,and they were using a mix of Linksys parts as well. So I decided to go direct with Linksys equipment. Here is the review as submitted.
For an item that was not even available in Best Buy and the other major stores when I first bought it from Amazon, and that I received it in only a couple of days is knowledge enough to make this a winning situation.
What about hookup and use? Another 5 star performance. If you have never hooked up a wireless network before, take the advice of the quick start guide that comes with the unit, and use their included CD. They strongly recommended that you use the CD rather than manually configure it. Having seen the problems that some others were having with setup, only to be resolved (some of them) by exactly following the directions, you can see, that is the best way to go. The setup using the CD is about as easy as learning how to open a refrigerator door for the first time. Shutting off what they tell you to shut off, and turning on what and when they tell you to turn things on, results in a delightful install. Not even one glitch. The CD determines your internet connection, then it determines your system configuration, asks a few questions, and bingo you are up and running.
I install the PC Card for laptops as well, and that is just as easy to install. Within 10 minutes your surfing the web from all over the house. No Wires !
Pertaining to the speed issue: Remember when I discuss this that their is a difference between the speed inside of your network, and the the speed you are connecting to the web. I got 54MBps while I was in the same room. When I went into the living room, it went to very good, instead of excellent, and gave me 37MBps. Let's get a perspective here. A standard modem works at 56kbps tops. This router works at 54MBps that's megabyte not kilobyte. Their are 1024 kilobytes in every megabyte. So 54 Megabytes per second is about a thousand times faster than a standard modem. When hooked up to a Verizon DSL basic connection, you are running at a maximum of 700 plus kilobits on the download end, and 100 to 150 upload speed. I know I am getting specific, but the point I am making is that it does not matter what the connection speed you are running at any given moment, based on how close the base unit is to the PC card. What is important is that your internet connection will never even approach the speed capabilities of this router, so don't hassle yourself with any concerns over varying connect speeds of the wireless network.
Broadband hooked up to this wireless setup flies. As soon as you click on a site, it appears on the screen.
Faster connect speeds are important when communicating across the network, between machines, like when backing up drives across the network. For that reason, the faster N designated wireless is a little bit more expensive, but a lot faster than G. To go a step farther the ultimate in inter network communications, a hard wired gigabit or 2 gigabit connection rules. So the ultimate is to use an N connection for your router, which is your connection to the slower web, and use the faster N to a portable device, then hook up a gigabit switch, to run your hard wired connections between your devices in the network. I guess I am getting off on a tangent here, so back to the device at hand, which is still the most popular selling adapter.
Anyhow, just for reference, hooking up a DSL, or a broadband cable modem that was supplied by Comcast, with the Windows XP operating system, installation was as near automatic as can be. They do supply instructions when using Windows ME, 98 etc, that includes one more step than XP.
All in all this is a 5 star piece of equipment. Follow the directions exactly. It is easy. Hope this helps. This is the reason why I have a website, to help people with their installations. Did you know that as much as 30 percent of the wireless network products are sent back, because people give up trying to install them? Let's all save Amazon from the return product blues. I am here to help.

I will echo some of the positive things people have written about this product. I bought both the Wireless-G adapter and the Wireless-G router (v 1.1) from Linksys. I have used Linksys in the past and been quite happy with their stuff. In this situation I was pleased as i could be with the setup. I read the instructions mostly so that I would know what order to proceed in and i would say I was surfing wirelessly with no noticable loss of speed in about 10 minutes.

I can walk around my small NYC apartment with an "excellent" signal. Of course I'd expect that because there is no more than one wall between the AP and the laptop in any given poin in the apt.

That is where the good news ends. The bad news has two flavors,

1) the card gets extremely hot. I'm talking about too hot to touch and I'd guess it is up around 130-140 degrees F sometimes. It will heat up the entire left side of my laptop.

2) it disconnects sometimes. I wish i could find SOME pattern but it just seems to disconnect completely at random. it will disconnect when I am right on top of the router. Sometimes it will just come back on its own and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't I'll reboot, sometimes that works, sometimes not. I have checked some of the more obvious things one can find online regarding this issue and have found no real help. The driver and firmware are both up to date.

Aside from those two things i was a little bit troubled that the default configuration, even if you're all Linksys, is VERY vulnerable to attack. In fact, the default configuration has security that reminds me of what Microsoft thought security was when they were turning out Win 3.11. Suffice to say you'll be spending some time configuring your network if you don't want to be sharing it with everyone in the building.

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Update

I did eventually figure out that 2.4Ghz phones will interfere with the signal that this wireless router uses. If you have a 2.4Ghz phone or anyone in an apt near you does then that could be your problem.

As already mentioned by other reviewers, this card does not work on my Compaq Presario 900 running WinXP. The laptop freezes with 100% CPU utilization as soon as the card is installed. I've tried all the suggestions ranging from the latest drivers, disabling various items in the device manager and configuring WinXP zero config. wireless service. All to no avail! Customer support was sub-par, with the representative basically reading off a script. If you own a Compaq or HP laptop, please save yourself the trouble and DO NOT buy this until someone releases a fix!

!!UPDATE 4/1/03!!: This is no April Fools, Linksys has released a beta driver that did work for my Presario laptop. It can be found on their driver download page. In small print it says: "If you are having problems using this Adapter and you have a Texas Instrument CardBus Controller, please download this driver here."
I needed to install the driver in safe mode, but now it's smooth surfing!

I installed the WPC54G with the WRT54G Router on a Sony GR-390 with Windows XP. The Router configuration went well using the included disk. After going to the Linksys site and downloading the most current driver for the PC card, the PC card installation seemed ok. The problem was that the PC card showed inactive and would not communicate with the router. I ran msconfig and checked the services tab and did not have Wireless Zero Configuration on the list. This is required to configure the wireless connection. Sony (and probably other OEMs) elected not to start this process in the Windows Registry. This is most likely the problem many XP users are having. It can be corrected by editing the Windows Registry to automatically start WZCSVC, but this should not be attempted unless you know how (if you must ask how, you should not be trying it). After making this change and using the Linksys knowledge base article ID KB10934338 mentioned in another review, everything works well.

I bought this along with the Linksys WRT54G wireless router. I have a Sony Vaio laptop with Windows XP. The setup was easy using the included instructions and Windows Zero Wireless Configuration. New drivers (ver3.20.21.0) are available from Linksys. The range is excellent in my house, at about 100feet through 1 wall the signal strength is good at 48Kbps. Using it outside I can connect at 11Kbps at about 200 ft from the house. The provided instructions are horrible for configuring security other than WEP 128 for WIndows XP.

Linksys supports the newer more secure WPA protocol and I highly recommend using it since WEP 128 is almost useless to prevent specific attacks against your network. You should use WPA-PSK (Pre-Shared Key) with TKIP encryption on the router and on the properties of the wireless card. Though Linksys has supported WPA since May you won't find anything about how to configure it on the card and router in their knowledge base. The Key can be any letter, number and a few symbols from 8-63 characters long. You can also set the Group Key renewal 0-99,999 sec. I set it to 0. Under the IEEE 802.1x authentication set the EAP type to PEAP and uncheck boxes for "Authenticate as computer when information is available" and "Authenticate as guest..." unless you use these features. Also, change the SSID and don't broadcast it and use MAC filtering to lockdown your network.

Being something of an electronic gadget klutz, I admit to having trepidations when I ordered this piece of equipment and the Router. I had never set up a network -- to say nothing of a wireless one.

I could not have been more surprised. Following the advice of the quick start instructions and set-up CD included in the Router package, I had the network up and running in less than five minutes. Not even a glitch.

The notebook adapter was installed and recognized the signal. In what seemed to be no time, I was wirelessly surfing the web with no apparent loss of speed compared to my wired connection.

To sum it up, this is a great product.

After purchasing the WPC54G v2, I was disappointed to notice that it evidently doesn't support AES. I'm using the Linksys Network Monitor v2.1 (also tried Funk Odyssey), and driver v6.0.0.18.
Linksys' website has the product data sheet for this card, which lists security as: WEP, AES, TKIP, 802.1x. The user guide, that came with the card, as well as the user guide posted to the website, speaks about AES as a selection. And the Network Monitor application, prompts you to choose, "from either TKIP or AES," only that AES is not listed in the drop down list.
From my reading posts, it appears that v2 doesn't support AES, while some other WPC54G versions do. The problem is that Linksys makes it very unlikely that you'll realize this before purchasing the card. Between their website, userguide, software, as well as all their retail channel partners listing AES as a supported protocol, you're destined to purchase the card and be disappointed once you attempt to configure AES.
After contacting Linksys, this is the clarification I received, "...AES is supported with the previous version which is WPC54G Version 1. There is no driver yet for the version 2 wireless-g adapter that supports AES as on the moment. Keep posted from the website for any updates with regards to the device. You can go to www.linksys.com..."
This doesn't really manage expectations, though, and leaves it likely that others may potentially experience the same confusion.

The Linksys WPC54G notebook adapter is a treat. Mated to the Linksys WRT54G wireless router, G-speeds of 54MB/sec are possible. I found signal strength to be excellent throughout my house which spans 2 floors and 2,000 square feet.

The adapter itself is quite small and unobtrusive. It requires a PCMCIA port on your laptop, and very little else. Using the zero network configuration feature of Windows XP, I was able to connect and surf in a matter of 10 minutes. If you have a different Windows Operating System, I suspect that you will have to spend a bit more time installing drivers and adjusting configuration settings, but there is no reason for the whole setup to be complex. As always with Linksys products, I recommend throwing away the installation CD that comes with the product. The automated installation does nothing that can't be accomplished even by the novice. Furthermore, you don't get all the networking software installed by default which will, in many cases, cause your perfectly working network to cease functioning.

My Gateway notebook gets quite hot near the processor area, but this heat is NOT transmitted to the Wireless adapter. The card itself cannot heat up becuase there is nothing inside it that causes heat dissipation. Rather the heat referred to in other reviews here may be because the card is conducting heat from the processor core.

The adapter is physically pleasing with a neutral grey antenna patch and the blue Linksys logo clearly visible. Two LEDs show power and link status, but are largely unnecessary.

In Wireless-G mode, this card has greatly enhanced my wireless surfing experience. Pages load with a snap, and games exhibit no lag whatsoever. Furthermore, my wireless-b hardware seems to be positively affected as well. Connections are more stable and signal strength has improved.

I fully recommend this product, especially if your infrastructure already uses Linksys components. Smooth installation, powerful feature set, and perfect pricing, makes this a piece of hardware not to miss!

I installed this card into an old Sony Vaio PCG-F160 laptop - i.e, a 300mhz laptop running at it's max memory of 192mb! I just upgraded to Windows XP SP 1 on it. (And believe it or not, XP runs at a decent speed even!)
I also use a WRT546 wireless-G broadband router/WAP, and 2 WMP54G cards for my two desktops.
I have had very little trouble with the card's functionality - it communicates very well with the WRT54G router. It is nice to be able to take the laptop anywhere in my home and have my broadband internet connection ready at a moment's notice.
Pros of the card and software:
*The setup was REALLY easy!
*Network connection appears to be stable and quite reliable
most of the time
*Speeds are MUCH FASTER than my wired LAN when I use Ad-Hoc
mode on my router to transfer files between my other pcs.
*Linksys actually knows how to buld their products
with a sense of aesthetic STYLE. Have you seen the other
brands out there? Some are downright "FUGLY"! Not
everyone cares about appearance for their wireless
components. But *I* do.

Cons:
*The edge of the WPC54G that sticks out of my laptop is raised and prevents me from using my RJ45 wired lan card without removing the wireless card first. Not that I need the wired connection any longer. Still, HIGHLY annoying!
*If you currently have a 2.4 ghz cordless phone, you may need to buy a 900mhz, or the new 5.8ghz cordless phones. When I or my significant other use the 2.4ghz phone , the wireless network is SOMETIMES, not always, disrupted momentarily, although reconnection is quickly reestablished - about 5 seconds or so - it seems to be a problem only when initially taking the phone "off the hook". Once a conversation is in progress, the network seems to be stable once again. Also, there are 11 channels you can select from when setting up your network on the WRT54G router(and on the notebok card too of course), ranging from 2.412Gghz to 2.462Ghz. I curently use channel 6, which is 2.437Ghz. Maybe using a different channel would alleviate, or at least minimize, this annoyance..?
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The software takes a little getting used to at first. The "WLAN Monitor" software is very simplistic to use, but the WEP encryption/passphrase aspects had me confused for a little bit. I still have a lot of experimenting to do with my new wirelsss-G network, but so far: AWESOME!

Great Card. I combined this with the (finally delivered) WRT5G wireless "G" router.
Pretty easy setup. Made an icon on my laptop desktop for easy network admin of the card - works pretty slick.
Speeds are just as fast as if I plug in the old hard wired Linksys card (cable ISP)and about 3X as fast as the old 802.11B WAP I just removed. Seems to get much better signal as well (was getting 37% at 100 feet now 97% at same distance).
WEP security was pretty tricky - direct typed in the hexidecimal instead of using the passphrase generator (shudda worked?)
The bonus is I can take this on the road and still connect to "B" airport/hotel/starbucks WAP's.
I'm excited that I upgraded, my wireledd laptop is just as fast as my desktop and fileserver.

Rich in California