Customer Reviews

Proxim Orinoco 8421-WD 11b Client PC Card (Silver)

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I bought this card (used) off ebay for $14 and it works great with my 6 year old Sony Vaio laptop. It took a little research on some online forums, as well amazon.com reviews for me to decide on this pc card. I thought about orinoco gold but my laptop is very old so I didn't want to waste alot of money. I saw silver in the range of $25-$40(retail) and the gold $40-$70 and with the slow processor on my laptop, I thought it best to go with silver (gold is better with newer laptops). I also wasn't too much concerned about security because my desktop is where my business is handled. This was strictly an experiment into the wireless world. The laptop was also given to me so like I said before, I didn't want to invest alot of money.

My laptop runs Windows 98 (not SE) and this card was researched as able to run on all Windows OS, not just the newer XP, ME, etc. I am glad I made this choice. I know a little about computers but I am no expert. After figuring out that I needed to use an updated driver (other than the one that came with the card on ebay) I was instantly connected to my wireless network from my desktop! I use a linksys usb adapter on my desktop and a Linksys router. I was ecstatic when I saw amazon.com load on my 6 year old laptop, wirelessly! This card was worth every penny. You won't be disappointed.

I bought this card because of the strong reviews and low price. Beware! The software support is abysmal; I cannot add new networks in the client manager, and when I tried to go online to get more up-to-date software, the downloaded 'updates' were non-functional. This is compounded by the fact that none of the 'read me' or online 'documentation' files actually have any instructions in them - they all just list the many updates made to the non-functioning software ("Chinese character support updated")