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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Make sure u have the latest revision - read for more info..., April 14, 2004
First, you must know that D-Link has the annoying and unprofessional habit of releasing unfinished, not so ready hardware to market. It seems that their engineering team is under pressure from marketing (typical) to deliver products before they are completely tested and ready. There are several revisions (internal designs) of this and other D-Link products. As of this writing (April 2004), the DWL-G650 has 7 of them, A1, B1, B2, B3, B4, C1, and C2 each representing a correction to a "Oops" of some sort! The DWL-G520 has 2, A and B, while the DI-624 router has 3, A, B, and C. The latest revision is what you should look for, it is usually on the sticker on the back of the box - just below the serial number.OK, so I had the DI-614+ router, DWL-650+ PC Card, and DWL-520+ PCI card, and they worked great. I just needed the higher speed to stream music and video from my server upstairs, and wanted to use the more secure WPA protocol (not yet supported on the DWL-520+ *stupid D-Link*), so I upgraded to the DI-624 router (rev. C), DWL-G650 PC Card (rev. B4), and DWL-G520 PCI Card (rev. B). I upgraded the firmware on the router right away to 2.42 and the driver for the G650 to 2.48. The router seemed to work fine, but the card was not seeing it. My older 802.11B card (DWL-650+) was able to see and connect to the new router, but not the new card. I tried many things to no avail. I then installed the older driver 2.42 and the card started seeing the router but had trouble keeping the connection..I played with many settings and nothing helped. I tried two other laptops (different brands) and experienced the same symptoms.
Finally, I went to the a store and purchased another DWL-G650 and made sure it was the newer rev. C2 (the latest). Guess what, it worked right away and kept the connection solid. I tried FTP between the server (wired to the router) and the wireless laptop and got a transfer throughput of about 2400KBytes/sec... This is while using WPA-PSK with Super G enabled and using a short preamble. The same results were obtained with the PCI version of the card (DWL-G520).
I returned the bad PC Card (rev. B4) back to the store and kept the new one! So, just make sure that you have the latest version of the hardware. One more thing, if you compare the signal quality/strength between DWL-650+ and DWL-G650 or between DWL-520+ and DWL-G520 you'll find that the new cards have a much lower number (worst). For example, my old 650+ used to get around 70% quality compared to 36% for the G650 at the same exact spot/direction. The difference is identical when comparing the 520+ to the G520. I have not experienced any performance issues though, the TxRate is typically at 72Mbps (not 108Mbps)! I think the new AirPlus XtremeG utility calculates the quality number differently and hence the difference, and future driver updates may further enhance the signal measurement. D-Link's release of faulty hardware is wrong and must be stopped. The problem is that their competition are not much better. So go for what works, and buy from a place that has a good return policy. Someday another vendor will make better products and offer better support, and I will abandon D-Link :)
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