jnoschese's Full Review: Linksys (WUSB11) USB 1.1 Network Adapter
I bought this card just to try something else out. The Linksys is very small, has a removable base kinda thing that you could mount it like on the back of a laptop screen, or maybe even the dashboard to your car. It even has double stick velco so you can attach it, and then slide out the base part and bring the card elsewhere and reattach it to the base when ready for use.
Driver installation is rather simple, basically plugging it into your USB port and installing the drivers from thre CD. My problem during installion was inserting the USB cable properly. For some reason the cable inserting into the card has to "click in." Even though the cable wasn't "clicked in," I still got a power light, yet my USB port showed nothing hooked up to it. After 5 hours of playing around with what might have been wrong, I forgot to check the obvious and make sure it was fully plugged in. Needless to say, I never detach the cable from the device anymore.
The range is better than my Netgear MA101. I can hit two more Access Points from the same location with the Linksys than I can with the Netgear card. I'm guessing the Linksys has a better dBm rating. I'm not so sure that these readings are labeled on the box when looking. I'm actually quite surprised that this is the case, I would've figure the netgear has a better range for some reason, maybe I'm just routing for the underdog..either way, the Linksys is a much better USB adapter. The Link light will flash when it's doing something and also has a power led. However, these two lights aren't really all that nessecary, but can be helpful, especially since they are two seperate lights.
The driver utility software that comes with it is very flaky. Sometimes it loads, sometimes it doesn't. Really, you don't need this software so much, since if your setting up your own access point, you will just be configuring your network card with the same settings as your access point. In Windows XP, it has basically the same features in Windows XP that comes with the linksys card, so your not missing much except for the signal meter and link meter, which you really won't be looking at much regardless once your connected, unless your looking around for access points other than your own, or trying to setup your access point for good distances around the home.
Windows 2000 shows a different interface for its driver, but has the same functionality. The level meter and signal meter might be slightly different, but not by much. Personally, Windows 2000 is quiet unfun with wireless and I enjoy Windows XP much better than 2000 in this case. But if your basically just setting up your card to access your own access point, this shouldn't be a big deal.
Not much else to say about this card, or any of them for that matter, it's your basic USB wireless card. I'm sure performance could be better if you had a PCI card, but the power of USB gives you versitility allowing you to connect it to any USB capable machine, and this card surprisingly has an excellent range compared to other Linksys cards, including their PCMCIA adapter.
This card works with Netstumbler's .30 version in Windows XP, not sure about Windows 2000, but I don't think so.
It makes driving around rather fun for hardcore geeks like myself.
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