Netgear MA521 802.11b Wireless PC Card

Manufacturer:	Netgear
List price:	~~$48.99~~
Our price:	Too Low To Display that is 100% off!

Netgear MA521 802.11b Wireless PC Card

Average rating: Stars

Good, economy wireless card.

The card set up easily and works well. It's a lot better than the internal card most laptops now come with.

I bought the 11b to save money and it works well for the price.

Netgear MA521 802.11b Wireless PC Card - Netgear

Card not bad, but not the best

I bought this card for an old Toshiba laptop (Win98) that I got off of eBay, so I could access the DSL at home and school. I bought this card because 1)it was cheap and 2)it did not stick out of the laptop very far, which I hate about most PCMCIA wireless cards.

I wiped the hard drive and put XP Home SP2 on the laptop, and popped in this card. It asked for the drivers from the CD, and in less than five minutes I was connected and up and running on my wireless at home. So far so good, but I soon discovered that this card has a few odd quirks:

1) I ordered this card from a Zshops seller on Amazon.com, and I got a Comcast MA521, which is basically the same as the Netgear, uses Netgear drivers and utility etc. Same card, just rebranded.

2) When I am connected to my Linksys WAP11 at home, the signal is never full bars, and even sitting right next to the router, the signal varies from 2 to 4 bars for no apparent reason. However, when I connect to the Linksys WRT54G at school, the signal meter works just fine. Definately odd.

3) Once I am not in the same room as the router, this card will drop the connection and reconnect every few minutes. It is not a great problem because it usually reconnects in a second or two, but it means the "Connected to..." message keeps coming up. To get rid of these messages I let the Netgear utility program manage my wireless connections, but it still drops the connection for a second or two. Kinda annoying.

4) If I bring the laptop out of hibernation mode, the card does not connect properly the first time. I have to pull it out and push it back in to get a proper connection.

These 'quirks' occur only with my Linksys WAP11, so it appears that this card just does not get allong with my WAP11, which is rather annoying. It works fine with the newer WRT54G.

So basically, you get what you pay for. Don't expect excellent signal range, and it does start dropping the connection as the signal strenght gets low, which is annoying. It does its job though.

Netgear - Netgear MA521 802.11b Wireless PC Card

Excellent

I've had this card for almost 4 months. I use it on T-Mobile's WiFi service at Starbucks etc. It is excellent! I got it for $10.00. You can't beat that price. You'll never use the 11 mbps anyway; 802.11g etc. are overkill inless you work in an office.

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