Customer Reviews

NETGEAR WMB521NA 802.11b Wireless Kit for Notebooks

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

 

 

I have to say, I was a little concerned about this product after reading about some of the difficulties other buyers have experienced. I was also a bit nervous about installing it myself, since I am not what you would call a computer expert.

From Day One after installing it, though, I have been impressed. It gets fantastic range throughout my entire house, even through walls and heavy, metal objects. Signal strength on my computers is almost always between 90-100%, and has NEVER dipped below 73%.

As for the network installation itself, it was easy and took a total of about an hour (and that includes installation and configuration of wireless cards on 2 computers).

And you can't beat the price on this thing. I highly recommend this and other Netgear wireless network products.

The wireless router/ap include good logging features. Many entry level units of this type do not have these funtions. This is very easy to setup for the novice.

I am partially convinced that these units have quality issues. The wireless portion on a friend's Netgear MR814v2 stopped working. The router that I purchased was returned due to a similar problem; there was definately a malfunction as some LED lights stopped working after several days. The switch portion remained active, however. If the units did not have any problems, I would have given this 5 stars.

I have purchased one for my office since the first one I have at home was so good. I recommend this to every one. Specially the PC card has a low profile and does not stick out 2 inches like some other brands. Setup was a snap butI ended up using the Windows XP wireless setup vs Netgear's.

I bought this a few days ago, it is easy to setup with the instruction, and works fine. Also the range is good for me.
anything we can ask more for this price?

Easy to setup and use. Good connections _initially_. However, product quality is low and support is horrible. After 4-5 months of use with this router, I am going back to my old Belkin router. The reason being dropped connections and expensive support options with the Netgear router.

Recommend this for short term and experimental usage.

no trouble at all hooking this up to give my laptop wireless access in the house.

I have had this router for almost over a year now and its still working. The router has a wireless option and 4 wire-connecting ports. It was a bit difficult to configure the router initially with the security provisions but after a bit of toiling it started working. And don't expect Netgear to provide any help on any aspect of the router. The help documents are obsolete and absolutely meaningless. You can find more details about the router on the internet than on Netgears' support site.
The wireless connectivity is a bit sluggish at times and the connection keeps dropping after about 5 months of usage. The wire-connected connectivity is good and provided consistent connection for a long time but off-late, I observed that, it too resists internet connections. Netgear's solution of turning off everything and starting again didn't work. My observation is that, the router sometimes becomes hot and something inside tells it not to allow connections. I switched off the router and allowed it to cool and tried connecting again and it was back to normal. I have used this trick since then to get back to the cyberworld.
If you are a home-user and has a bit of patience to search the internet to fix problems or try your own knowledge, this router is for you.
-Prashant.

I've had this router for a month now, and am very happy with it. I use an IBM T41 laptop with a built-in wireless card.

The installation was quite easy and took about 10 mins. Everything needed is included in the box.

The signal strength thoughout my (1000-square feet) home is always 'very good' or 'excellent', even through a few walls. Like some other routers, I haven't experienced dropped connections when the phone/microwave/other electronics is turned on.

Earlier, the connection was being dropped every 10 minutes or so. This is a very common problem with some routers. I disabled the IEEE authentication to fix this. Now, the connection never drops, even after 24 hours. (This doesn't mean there is no protection, you should use WEP to protect your network against hackers). I strongly recommend that you use a good firewall like ZoneAlarm (their free version is also decent) with any internet connection.

It looks sleek too. You also have the option of mounting it on a wall for a clearer signal, although I didn't need to do this.

(...)

Update, 6/16/2005: I had a minor problem today (the router lost the connection to the internet). Customer service was helpful and solved the problem in some time. For some reason, the connection settings were lost and I had to re-enter them.

Has anyone who bought this received as part of the package the GPL source code for the router and NIC?
Thanks

Having just bought this combo package on Aug 20, I can tell you that both the router and the notebook adapter work as advertised. The setup took about 15 minutes, but only because I wanted to customize my wireless settings. I am giving this package a rating of 4 stars because occassionally, I do notice a slowdown in the wireless network. Have not looked into it as yet, but it's not something that could be characterized as a "show-stopper" (at least till now). I have a older Dell CPx notebook with 128 MB and a 500 MHz processor and was concerned that the notebook card might not work with it - but had no issues at all there. I also have an HP Pavilion and a Vonage (Cisco) ATA wired into the router. Couldn't ask for more for the price (check out the rebates being offered currently by Netgear).