Customer Reviews

NETGEAR WG511T Super-G Wireless PC Card

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

At least when paired with the Netgear WGT624 WAP/Router this card does indeed have a significant farther range than for instance the DLINK 614+ was was currently using. I can go from one corner of the house downstairs to a bedroom at the opposite corner of the house upstairs, on a waterbed at almost full speed (this gave the DLINK some trouble).

It also comes with a nifty utility that does a better job than Windows with settings and statistics (like actual network throughput).

One minor issue may be with how hot this card gets which is always a concern with a laptop. To the cards credit there are settings for Power Save and Transmit Power which may help.

I bought this card for an older Dell Inspiron 7000 running Win98 SE.

If you buy this card, I recommend that you first go to the [...] website, click on the support tab, choose Downloads, highlight the WG511T Adapter and download the latest firmware driver revision, ver 3.9. When you unzip it, it has the driver file, the user guide and the install guide. Read the Install Guide before you do anything.

Don't bother with the bundled CD-ROM. Install the downloaded driver from the setup file and reboot, as it requests. When I ran the driver setup, I got a general protection fault message. I cancelled it and the setup seemed to continue just fine. After reboot the driver database was set up in Windows. At that point, I turned the laptop completely off and then inserted the card.

Upon bootup again, Windows found the card and loaded the proper drivers. It again directed a reboot. After that, the card was powered up and began searching for my network.

Be sure that you know the proper settings for your router. If it's set not to broadcast your SSID, then you must tell the Netgear card the name of your network in the Netgear Smart Wizard that controls the card. Also, if you're using WPA-PSK security on your router, you have to select the Advanced Security portion of the card setup and manually type in your Shared Key.

After I did that, The card immediately locked onto my network. I tried to open an internet connection, but it failed to do so after the "Detecting Proxy Settings" message had been displayed for awhile. I went into Internet Tools on the browser and reset all of the security settings to the defaults, closed the browser and reloaded it. It then found the internet connection and worked flawlessly.

I recommend a lot of patience during this whole process. Many of these laptops are older machines with slow processors and operating systems and you have to be sure and wait during the install process. Watch your hard drive indicator light and be sure that everything has finished loading before clicking on the next step.

Many reviews on this card have mentioned the confusing blinking lights. They're explained in the User's Manual. Some folks have also mentioned that the card runs hot. Mine seems warm, but not unusually hot.

Durability has been questioned by some, but since I just installed mine a few minutes ago, I cannot address that. Hopefully, Netgear has addressed the issue. Thus far I'm extremely pleased with the card.

I put this card in my wife's Dell Inspiron 4000 Laptop. It replaced a NetGear 802.11b card. Worked great! Then the Blue Screens of Death started. I have tried different combos of using Window's XP to control the card (against recommendations but is more stable) and using different versions of the software for both the card and NetGear's controlling software to no avail. I am now down to the last attempt, using Window's updated software for the card with Windows controlling the card. We'll see.


Pros- Incredible range. Shows 2 more networks in my neighborhood then my Centrino notebook. Super fast page loading.

Cons- Crashes the computer. It causes memory dumps that corrupts running programs. The NetGear newsgroups show that it is a known problem with their cards and customer service doesn't have a fix. Do the research yourself. One thing that MAY be the reason for the crashes is that some were using an XP upgrade from ME, which this laptop also has.

But try it for yourself. It is a great card when its not crashing the system. There are so many different configuations it may work. If not, return it. Good Luck!

I purchased this in a bundle with a Netgear WGT 624 router (the router to replace an router that had stopped working). The router/card package were deeply discounted at brick and mortar store (hint: "that was easy"), so I figured it would be a nice way to upgrade my laptop's wireless data transfer rate (at least while working at home with Netgear's proprietary higher data rate format).

Set up and install were trouble-free, and the card immediately recognized my network (and many of my neighbors') and was connected right away. I've since used it in multiple hot spots (802.11g and 802.11b), and it has detected and connected with no problems.

I seem to go through Netgear routers like some people go through light bulbs, but I've enjoyed great success with their wireless adapters (both PCMCIA, PCI and USB interfaces). I'm enjoying the faster data rates at home and the ease of connection on the road.

In the world of wireless products (routers and adapters): just like with cars, anybody can sell you a lemon. There are complicated hardware and software environments and you never know what's going to work or not until you plug it in...this one was a winner for my needs.

i am running suse 9.3 on an older sony desktop that has a pcmcia slot. i was using an older 802.11b card but wanted to upgrade to WPA-PSK so started looking for a G card that would work with suse. searching the internet i found that cards with the atheros chipset are supported without use of third party "wrappers" and windows drivers. i inserted the card and went to YaST configuration and the card was recognized! i turned MAC address filtering and encryption off in my router. this eliminates 2 variables and makes getting set up easier. after i made sure i was connecting to the internet i turned MAC filtering and encryption on. so far no problems. the card gets great reception. my router is an smc barricade G. i have a motorola usb wireless access point hooked to an old hp desktop and my mac mini using airport extreme wireless. all work great together.

I purchased this product for a Dell Inspiron 8000 (Windows 2000, Pentium III 900) in March 2005, and so far (July) I had no problems, except the fact that the card heats up quite rapidly, so that the fan keeps working almost all the time while I am online. Installation was quick and easy, and the laptop immediately recognizes the card once I plug it in. Overall I am quite satisfied with the product, and the price looks all right too. (...)

I bought this card and the matching netgear router at the same time. I had throughput problem which was resolved after searching internet. However, the connection keeps dropping randomly, no matter what I did.

I exchanged a few emails with their support. No help there, then they asked me to call so that we could try a few things together.

I called this evening. After long wait and answering questions like serial number/model number/etc., I was really amazed in the end that the clueless netgear representative told me the solution was to go back to store and return the product.

It seems that they don't give a damn to their customer or their buggy product.

To make things worse, the barely English speaking representative didn't want to find me a technition who knows a bit more than registering the product, he didn't want to tell me his name, and he didn't connect me to his supervisor either. I have to say that I've never ever had this kind of bad customer service call with any company.

Netgear set the new low record, congratulations!

Bought this card and it worked fine for a couple months. Then it started dropping the connection an average of every couple of minutes. I tried every fix I could find on the internet and nothing. So I tried their email support -- they gave me a bunch of standard cut-and-paste responses until they finally said they were upgrading it to a tier 2 technician, whereupon they quit talking to me (I've yet to hear back from them, despite repeated emails). So I tried calling -- they said it's a software issue and I can either go back to email support (remember: no word for over a month despite repeated emails) or I can get premium support for $32.99 for 15 minutes -- which is asinine since if I use tech support for half an hour, it'd cost me more than what I spent on the card.

If you buy this card, pray that nothing ever goes wrong with it -- if it does, you're screwed. For my part, based on this card and pretty much every experience I've had with Netgear, I'm never buying from them again.

My entire wireless network is now made up of Netgear components and this card works great just like the rest of them.
The main feature I like about the card is its ability to operate at 108 Mbps with my WGT634U router (in 108 Auto mode) while still allowing my other notebooks to operate at their 54 Mbps maximum.
The supplied software is just as great as the version that came with my Netgear WAG511 card. So setup and security was a snap.
I am using the card primarily on a KDS laptop running Windows Me (I know) which is a small wonder in its own right. It runs great without any problems or blue screens (knock wood).
From time to time, I use the card in my Dell Inspiron 8100 running Windows XP Professional. I have to interchange it with a Xircom NIC/Modem card I'm using though but still no major issues in doing so.
I originally got the WAG511 card because of its dual band a/b/g capibilities but it only achieved 108 with my router in 108 only mode which would not allow my other 54 cards to function. Hopefully, Netgear will release a new driver for 108 auto support like that of this WG511T card.

My use of the card has been limited to wireless connections at places like Starbucks and airports, which is regular 802.1b at 54 Mbps, I believe. Within the limited use, my experience with the card has been only pleasing. Although I use the card with Debian Linux, the installation was as easy as it gets thanks to MADWiFi (see http://madwifi.sourceforge.net/). A bit of kernel configuration (enabling standard kernel options for wireless, pcmcia, etc.), apt-getting deb packages pcmcia-cs and wireless-tools, and updating /etc/network/interfaces as usual got it working for me.

I had another wifi card (PCI) on my desktop, and that one (Linksys) was a [...], though. The key for finding hardware for a Linux box is really relying on other people's experience (tons of them on the web) and to get the one that's supported well by an open source project. This one is.