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Outside the usual little glicks setting up a wireless network the installation and subsequent performance of this item have been exceptional. Support is available online and proved invaluable.
The directions were clear and easy to follow. I bought this adapter to install in my Dell Dimension 4550. It was an extremely easy install (much easier and faster than when I installed my network router). The adapter picked up my router right away and once I entered my router key, the PC had a wireless connection. It performs flawlessly.
It works.still dont like wireless though and going to wire the house
I haven't had this product long enough to know whether it will last, but I was extremely impressed by the ease of setup--definitely 5 stars.I bought this to add a new Dell desktop PC to our existing wireless-G network, with a Linksys router. I did, and about 60 seconds later, the computer was on the Internet. After about 15 hours on the phone with both Dell and Linksys technical support, I figured out that the cause was another company's trial software that Dell had installed on our system--it set up a firewall that we could not turn off, that protected us from the dangers of the Internet by not allowing us ON the Internet. Let me state that I hated setting up the network originally, because I didn't know what I was doing, and I have had trouble adding friend's laptops onto it when they came to visit. However, I do not blame Linksys for the problem, because it was not their software that caused the problem, and the rest of our Linksys network works just fine. I was anticipating several hours of playing with network names, channel settings, and security codes to get it right. (That HAS lasted well, for the last 2 years). I wish everything was this easy.(Added April 2009) Like some others here, our card did stop communicating after about 6 months.
Installing the hardware was a bit of a pain, but that is my fault and Dell's--first, because I turned off the computer and started to take it apart before I read the directions that said to install the software FIRST, and second, because Dell made it easy to open their case, but hard to get the back cover off the one empty PCI slot (which looked like two empty slots from the outside). But once I had the card in, the case closed, the antenna screwed on, and the power back on, the directions said to press the button on the front of the router and click "next" on the computer. We had to re-install all software on our computer and we are still having problems. FYI, our operating system is Windows XP.
Like others have mentioned, this card seems to stop functioning altogether at one point or another - but no one has mentioned anything about Linux (or maybe I missed it). I tried it and my system froze.After a reboot, I decided to remove those rt drivers and the already installed version of ndiswrapper, use the 'make' and 'make install' commands for the latest version, installed the driver with ndiswrapper, modprobed it, went through the Wireless GUI, and added ndiswrapper as a module to load on bootup (can't recall the command right now).It might seem like a lot of work but in the end I haven't had to touch any of the command line since. Yes, I had this very card working on a Windows box for about three months, and suddenly the third party software decided to stop working with the unit no matter what I did through tech service and howto's off the internet.Since it was the kid's computer for games like Freddy Fish (stuff that works easily in Wine) I decided to try the card out on PClinuxOS, since it seemed to be the friendliest OS besides Ubuntu I could find.First thing I did was try the card on it's default rt drivers that were installed with PClinuxOS. At first it said it couldn't find any networks, then I tried again and it gave me a "ra0" option or something along that line. It even signs on during the boot process and if we ever change our essid or pass phrase or whatever I can just use the Wireless GUI again. Ever since NOT using Linksys third party software, this card has lasted two years and doesn't seem to be stopping any time soon.
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