Customer Reviews

D-Link DWL-650 Wireless Cardbus Adapter, 802.11b, 11Mbps

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(22)
1 star:		(48)

 

 

If all you want to do is use your laptop on the front porch, or in an unwired office at work, this adapter may be fine. But if you were lured into wireless by the promise of high speed internet access in airports, hotels, coffee shops and such, it is virtually worthless. To connect to a network, the DWL-650 must be specifically configured to have the same SSID (identifying name) as the network. That is fine if you only connect to one network and you know its SSID. It is a nuisance if you want to connect to several networks and have to reconfigure each time. It is fatal, however, if you want to connect to a strange network and do not know the SSID. Networks that are intended to be open to the public use "broadcast SSID" to send the network ID over the airwaves. Adapters that can receive broadcast SSID can then automatically configure themselves to log on. The DWL-650 cannot do that, and there are plenty of other comparably priced adapters that can.

I don't know much about rating the performance for this pretty much "basic" Wireless PC Card, but knowing that it is from D-Link I have more faith in it lasting longer without problems. I have had nothing but good experiences with D-Link products and I I will keep buying them until I am let down.

Everything was easy to set-up and it works well with my works little wireless network.

I admit, I'm an engineer by heart, a web/app developer by trade, and a network hobbist (no MCSE's in my plans). However, I do own a small business. I develop web/app solutions for my customers. So when one of them wanted to install their LAN using wireless, I was a bit skeptical. I was leaning toward CAT-5, but he insisted on wireless because he thouht it would be cool. HE WAS RIGHT! He has a small office with only a few workstations, but plans are for more users with laptops. The range is suprising good and installation was a snap. Using Win2k Server and Win98 Clients. Now that the price has dropped, I'm thinking about re(un)wiring my office!!!

This PCMCIA card was very easy to install and I was able to configure it in about 5-10 minutes. It Performs just as well as it is supposed to and I am happy to have found that it is truely 802.11b compliant.

A friend of mine has a wireless network at his home also and with a little settings change and a reboot I was able to connect to his computers.

Recommended to anyone who has a laptop and access to a Wireless network, or will soon have access to a wireless netowrk.

I'll give it two stars because it kind of work under 98.
But I give it a low rating because it's not one product
and a lot of reviewer confusion seems to have arisen
because this isn't just one product...

So the $100k question is:
"Yes, but *which* DWL-650 did *you* get?"
Was it the H/W revA or B card?
The revH?
The revP (or P1? Depends on whether you
check the box or the card or the CIS tuples!).
The PCCARD one or the CARDBUS one (they both exist, by the way)?

And this all leaves out the "+" model.

Our good friends at D-Link, as at LinkSys and SMC, seem to
take a liberal view of what a model number now means.

In fact, there are 32-bit Cardbus and 16-bit PCCARD type II
variants. I've seen them shelved together at a store and
the boxes distinguish them. Though the box will say "PCCARD" or
"CARDBUS", many of the DWL-650 variants are packaged
the same save for a small sticker on the lower left corner
of the back of the box. Go to the web site, and the overall page
says these are all Cardbus, go look at the particular RevP
card information and you get a different story.

Give D-Link this much credit: some other makers have completely
changed chip-sets and not announced any changes; they just tweak
the drivers. Some of the new
wireless chip-sets in the cut-rate variants of these previously
decent cards are of rather uneven quality.

The problem is that it's not just one product. It's something like
4 to 6 products labelled the same or nearly identically. The same
sleazy engineers who brought us winmodems and external
controllerless modems attached over USB have gone to work for
WiFi card makers and are engaging in the
age old tricks of supporting only MS Windows OS variants, and
trying to win the race to the bottom for cost by swapping out
chips, tweaking their drivers, and not telling anyone what's in
their hardware.

Want a reliable card with a known good chipset? By something
with an Intersil PRISM chipset... this is why you see
people saying "go get a Netgear card" or "go get an Orinoco
Gold". Like me, many of these people have poked at these cards
from FreeBSD or Linux and noticed the hardware changes as a
result. The PRISM chipset worked pretty well and had good,
driver support, even in freeware OSes where it was based on
drivers that had been written to the Wavelan's Hermes.

I've recently been to a store 3 times for
PCI wireless cards. The third one I bought I kept. It's
a Netgear MA311. At least _someone_ doesn't jack around with
what's in the box without changing the model number in
an obvious manner. The first two cards had changed chip sets
and didn't do what I wanted at all. In the second case, the
packaging was perfectly identical to the previous internally
very different card. I'm stuck with my DWL-650 because I got
rid of the box.

For those seeking PRISM card here's a partially reliable rule
of thumb based on the Netgear packaging: look all over the
box and look for a station firmware revision. Lots of PRISM2
and 2.5 cards ship with station firmware 1.3.6. Some have
1.4.9 and 1.5.6 reportedly exists. This at least might be a clue
when in doubt, though probably unreliable.

Best bet? Buy a Netgear card, or buy online and check
technical specs. at time of purchase. Some sites actually
list the chipset in the card, since some manufacturers tell,
though the big box stores don't seem to have them.

Finally, save yourself some trouble if you want a good,
reliable card: don't buy the cheapest thing on the shelf.
Spend the $50-$80 for a known quantity. You'll be happier
when the first one is a keeper. Don't be surprised though if you
end up exchanging... it's very common for unadvertised
changes to occur in these kinds of cards.

Caveat emptor.

D-Link created a confusion out there in the market area, selling the wirelss adapters with diffrent chipset using the same name for them.
The first models (version A and B) used to have Prism chipset from Intersil (which are supported by POSIX sistems) but now they changed thei chipset with other vendors like Realtek without changing the name of the product - that's how I bought this thinking it is spported - unfortunaltelly it is not !

I originally bought this just so I could hook up to a friend of mines Wireless Network, and we could share files without having to be connected to a wall or box of some sort. I have to admit that my friend and I were thoroughly impressed. He had a different (I don't want to mention names) Wireless Card in his laptop that he always used and he was content with that, but when I showed up with my D-Link DWL-650 it out performed his card in transfer speeds.

And the kicker is that my laptop is older and slower than his. We got curious and switched cards and did a clean installation to see if it was a fluke but when it was in his laptop it still out performed his other cards.

After finding this out and more extensive use of his wireless network, I had to have my own. I bought the D-Link Access point and hooked it up to my already existing wired network and I have to say I am very impressed. Laptops were made for mobility it is sad it took this long for wireless to be readily available.

Highly recommended.

I recently bought two dlink cards; the pc card version and the pci version to create a point-point wireless LAN. I was very disappointed with the short range; much below the advertised 50-100m. I had a lot of trouble getting the PCI card to work in my PC. Eventually I had to use a different motherboard since win2000 would freeze right after bootup if the PCI card was installed. Even when I got everything up and running I found that the range inside the house was very bad. I was getting absolutely no connectivity at 100 feet (33m) through walls. The advertised range is upto 100m (330 feet) indoors.

I ended up returning both cards. Wasted time and effort... do not recommend a purchase unless all you want is connectivity within a 70 foot area.

I bought this card along with some other wireless D-Link products and everything works Great!

The Installation was easy because of the quick installation guides provided by D-Link. They came in all the products I purchased from them. And as for connectivity, I can't remember anything that went wrong. This and the USB adapter I bought recognized the Access Point right away and the speed was just fine. I can transfer files from either of my computers just fine where ever I am in my house.

I will keep this short and sweet. This wireless PCMCIA card took less than 5 minutes to install, has very good range, and is plenty fast enough. I have a cable modem and Internet downloads don't take any longer when I am on my wireless connected computer or not.

I do notice a differnce in peer-to-peer file transfer times, but that is expected when the max speed comes down from 100Mb to 11Mb.