Customer Reviews

SMC2532W-B EliteConnect 2.4GHz 802.11b High-Power Wireless PC Card

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I bought this card for use on the boat at Shilshole Marina in Seattle, to connect to the access points of Broadband Xpress (www.bbxpress.net). After some research, I found that this card (among others) is built on the same chipset as the one bbx sells for $109, and I suspect it actually is exactly the same.

It works great on my IBM Thinkpad T20, with Win XP Pro SP2. I installed the drivers from the SMC website. No problem. The custom utility that comes with the drivers is pretty nice, with signal strength, quality, all the available APs, etc. I always use that instead of the Windows one.

The only drawback is the weakness of the detachable tab antenna. If you plug it in and out a lot, and travel around with your laptop, it WILL break. Mine did. SMC sent me a new one right away for $20. For that money I could have bought an external one, which I'll get anyway at some point.

I spent the summer setting up a 1500-foot radius wireless project. Up until this point we mostly used the Orinoco Classic Gold cards, which have the advantage of internal antenna and external port. However, the Orinoco power is relativelly low (30mw) and the internal antenna can't be disabled. The 200mw Senao cards with external antenna (only) worked even better. The 200mw SMC2532W-B has a removeable antenna AND external connectors -- a very nice design. Software installed easily on Windows 2000 Pro. It uses the same Prism 2.5 chip set as the Senao and similar specs, so I expect performance to be comparable. Initial tests look good.

Plugged this into my 400 Mhz 1st generation Apple Tibook. Installed the $20 802.11b wireless driver form ioxperts.com. Set DHCP. Done and working.

This has easily double and almost triple the effective range of the internal airport card.

Highly recommended.

I have bought two of these cards and the range is incredible. It works great in Linux also. In case you need an external antenna, it uses a reverse polarity MMCX connector. The only problem I have had is the little tab antenna will eventually break if you keep taking it off and putting it back on. That is OK, because i have two of these cards and use one only with the tab antenna and the other with my external antennas.

Had it six months, I love it, it works great, but the antenna broke today, unfortunately.

I've had a wireless network for over a year but the signal strength of my connection has always been poor once I get very far from my router so I thought I'd try this card.

It's great.

I did have some initial problems with it and my router despite following all the directions in their manual. I called SMC's technical support line though and got great help.

Turns out that with my Windows XP SP 1 system, despite directions and suggestions to the contrary, the High Power Utility software that comes with the card caused problems. On my system. While I could see that I had a strong connection between the card and the router the card could not reliably get an IP address back from the router. After uninstalling everything - the utility and driver, and then just installing the driver - no High Power Utility - my Internet connection started working! Reliably.

I can go all over our house and yard and get a good strong signal. It's amazing.

The card works and the support I got from SMC, while I wish I had not needed it, was wonderful.

5 stars!

if you struggle with marginal connections in your house, this sucker will definitely help. I tried a D-Link and a LinkSys, and both put out 15dB of signal, and was not enough.
This card rocks, and if 23dB is not enough, add an omnidirectional antenna, and get the legal limit 36dB!

Although I think I narrowed down the problem to DLINK and NETGEAR being the worst brand you could ever choose when buying a router and/or card... (Get a Linksys or a Belkin seriously! I honestly have not met one person with a fully functioning Dlink / Netgear router that I didn't have to replace after a couple weeks).

This card proves to be way better than the DLink DWL-G650 Rev B which was not picking up any signals whatsoever. I would have to be near the router at all times and even still the signal would fade... it was truly frustrating.

I didn't have any problems installing this card on Windows XP at all. Simply: 1) inserted the cd that came with the card (I opted not to install their utility), 2) plugged in the card while my laptop was on, 3) Windows asked for drivers for which I chose to automatically search and find the drivers which were located on the CD. And that was it! So far, I'm getting "excellent" signal strength from where I would previously get annoying "low"/"no connection available"/"disconnected" messages.

If you are having issues with your wireless connection or range, I would HIGHLY recommend this card. It really is a world of difference.

I have a number of computers and wireless cards (Linksys, Netgear, etc.), but could not get this one to work with any of my notebooks. I called customer service, and they were rude and useless. They basically treated me as though I were an ignoramus about computers. I definitely recommend going with another company.

I purchased this card and had to return it. It did not work on my computer. Service personnel could not help me and they do not speak clear English. This is the second SMC 2532 W-B card that I had had to return.