Customer Reviews

Sabrent PCI-G802 Wireless LAN 802.11g PCI Network 54MPS Wi-Fi Card Adapter - VISTA Ready

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I bought this Sabrent 54Mbps wireless-g PCI card from BuyPCdirect through Amazon.com. I chose it because it was inexpensive and seemed to have everything that I was looking for in a wireless card. When I received the card, I installed it in the PC and installed the software provided on the small CD which came in the box with the card onto my computer. My PC was running the Windows XP SP2 operating system. However, the card installed ok, but then would lose the wireless signal every few minutes. The disconnecting and reconnecting to the network was slowly driving me crazy! I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software provided, but the same thing happened. I was going to return the card and purchase a Linksys card instead, since my wireless access point was a Linksys brand as well. I had even packaged the card and contacted the seller about a refund, when I decided to search for more drivers online. I came across a driver for the Ralink WMP-RT2561ST chipset (which is the actual chipset on the Sabrent PCI card) at this website [...]. I installed the card again and installed this new software onto my PC and the card worked like lightning. No more irritating dropouts, and it was getting a great signal from the wireless access point. I then used Windows Update to get the latest November 2008 driver and the card now works like a charm. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a cheap, reliable PCI wireless card, but don't use the CD provided with the card.

I purchased this wireless card because it was cheap and Amazon said that it uses a Broadcom 4318 chipset, which I know works on Linux (the b43 driver in a vanilla kernel, since 2.6.24). When I recieved the card, and I inspected it, I found out that it's actually a different chipset (an RaLink RT2561). No worries, it still works on Linux, using the rt61pci driver.

From my lspci -v

00:09.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI
Subsystem: RaLink Device 2561
Flags: bus master, slow devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17
Memory at cfff0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
Kernel driver in use: rt61pci
Kernel modules: rt61pci


$ uname -a
Linux cat-in-the-hat 2.6.27-rc6-1ken #1 SMP Sun Sep 21 10:32:44 CDT 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

The upshot is that this card is a good deal and works in Linux.

This wireless network adapter will not leave you unsatisfied! Like many of Sabrent's products, it was inexpensive and high quality for the price. I had to buy it because my USB wireless network adapter was failing me, so I needed a reliable replacement for online quizzes. It was a quick, easy install into my PCI slot, and I was up and running in no time. I must say, it's MUCH faster and doesn't drop the signal nearly as much as my USB wireless g adapter. I'm typing this up using the free internet from my apartment complex a floor and many walls above me!

Another thing: it's 100% functional with linux, and the drivers on the CD work with Windows 7.

I was replacing a very old and slow DSL 802.11b wireless system with a cable wireless 802.11g system and needed to upgrade my two oldest desktop Macs(a 867-Mhz Quicksilver and a dual 1-Ghz MDD) that had been using Apple's original 802.11b Airport cards. This Sabrent PCI-G802 card was the least expensive b & g PCI card (under $20) that had any mention of Mac compatibility, so I figured it was worth a shot. The card does ship with a mini-CD that includes Ralink drivers for Mac, Windows, and Linux. However, there were no installation instructions for the Mac, so this might be an issue for people not comfortable in setting up a wireless network. I noted that a newer version of the Ralink driver (compatible with OS 10.3, 10.4, 10.5) was available on the Ralink website ([...]), which I downloaded and installed. Prior to software installation, the Airport card was removed and the PCI card installed. The Ralink wireless utility scanned for all the local wireless networks and it took just a couple of minutes to figure out the setup for my secured network. The cards have worked flawlessly on both G4s (10.4.11) during the month they've been in use. I was concerned about how they would perform when putting the G4's to sleep or bringing them out of sleep (this was a well-known problem with many USB 2.0 PCI cards for the Mac); however, there has to date not been any sleep-related problems despite multiple sleep periods each day. If you want an 802.11b,g card that is recognized by Apple's Airport software, you'll need to look elsewhere and pay a much higher price. Otherwise, this is a steal.

The Sabrent Wireless card that I purchased came with a disc that were not the most recent drivers. Vista was having trouble recognizing my new hardware. I had to use my roomate's computer to visit the Sabrent.com website and I downloaded the most recent drivers for the PCI-G802 Card. I installed these drivers and re-installed the card and it now works fine. I would suggest making sure you have the most up to date drivers if your machine is not recognizing this card or if you are having connectivity issues.

I would recommend this to anyone with Ubuntu who wants a wireless card and has an available PCI slot. Installation on Ubuntu 10.04 is as follows.

1. Turn off and unplug PC
2. Install the card in the PCI slot
3. Turn on PC
4. Select wireless access point from network connections

That's it. No mucking about about with modprobe, compiling drivers, etc. Just install the card and boot Ubuntu. There are also Windows drivers on a CD that came with it but I haven't tried those.

I was a little apprehensive about buying a WiFi card for only twenty-ish dollars but this thing works great! Installation was a breeze and the drivers that came on the disk work with Windows 7 (64-bit) just fine. I only regret that I didn't buy one of these sooner!

I installed this card on Windows 7 64 with dreadful results. I ran it on every driver I could find; I ran it with and without the included software; I altered every possible setting.

Regardless of all this, the card would choke brutally on moderate network traffic. Despite a decent, consistent signal picked up by the antenna, pings to the gateway would take 50ms, sometimes 100 or more. My ping in online games would start at 40ms but quickly spike to over 700.

When I installed an ancient D-Link 2320, getting exactly the same signal, I had absolutely none of these problems.

Easy to install. Worked good and easy to set up, but does not have much range. Playing with channels and adding an hi-gain antenna, and it works great now.

The box and online product description says it is "windows/linux/mac" - tried two PCI-G802 cards and neither worked in my Mac.