NETGEAR WN511B RangeMax Wireless-N Notebook Adapter

Very quick shipping came sooner than it said it would. Product works well.

Nobody uses PCMCIA cards anymore. Good deal for less than $10? I don't know. Years ago you'd pay a premium for something like this. Here is something I did learn however; IF you have a laptop OLD ENOUGH to need one of these, you should probably spend the money on a new laptop instead of this thing. My son acquired an A20M thinkpad for free. It came with 64MB of ram, was running Windows 2000 and didn't have wireless. I bought this. I mistakenly thought that the laptop was loaded with XP and I didn't even bother looking at the specs of the laptop.Once this arrived, I tried to install, only to realize it's XP compatible and Windows 2000 didn't really have support for Wireless. So I loaded XP on the minimum specs required. It ran, but it ran like crap. I spent another $20 on RAM for the laptop to jump it up to the max capacity of 512MB of ram. It still runs like crap, despite any optimization I could do to it. Long story short...you really shouldn't buy one of these. Yes, it does connect you to the internet but....really? Maybe Linux would run better on that laptop.

First up, this is a "Draft-N" card. It cannot connect to the 5.8GHz band. However, it can connect to most modern 2.4GHz hotspots supporting up to WPA2 (the current generation encryption as of this review).I bought this with the intent to fill a gap in my lineup.I collect old computers, including a lot of old laptops. Laptops that predate the wireless era.Most of my newer laptops that don't have PCMCIA, also have built in WiFi, so problem solved.However, my newest WiFi PC card could only go to 802.11g with WEP. This is a problem in the modern era.So I bought this. I read other reviews and determined that it probably wouldn't work on my Win2k laptops, but it couldn't hurt to try, especially for the price.YOU CAN USE THIS CARD ON WINDOWS 2000! You just have to be deliberate in installing it.First step, insert the "Driver" CD in your laptop. Dismiss autorun. Then, insert the card.Windows will ask you where you want it to look. Tell it your CD drive.It'll find and install the base drivers. But the card won't work yet, because Win2k doesn't have a WiFi client.You need to then insert the "Utilities" CD. You CAN install this from autorun.This will install the WiFi client so that you can connect to WiFi hotspots and get online.Windows XP and Vista have built in wifi clients. If needed, you can install just the driver from the first CD.I do not have any PC-card equipped laptops with any later version of Windows to do testing, but I think the Broadcom BCM4321 chipset inside of this card is supported under Windows update by Win7+.Under Linux:If you use Linux, you recognized that chipset I typed. The maligned b43. Fortunately, you are not stranded.In most popular distros, you can install a meta-package over Ethernet to install your firmware.If your distro does not have this meta-package, you need to install b43-fwcutter.You can then either follow the guides online for manually cutting your firmware via an online tarball, or use the Windows driver on the included CD. This is outside of the scope of this review though.

This would probably be a very good Adapter if it would work with an AMD processor, which it will not & didn't state as much in the description. I purchased the Wireless Netgear Router that this Adapter was recommended for & it's much better & easier to set up than the Lynksys i was using. I'm giving it a 4 star only because the Notebook N Adapter didn't work with the AMD. It installed easily & would work for a few minutes, then freeze up my Notebook. I did call Netgear to confirm it wasn't compatible with the AMD.

From the reviews I read, it was supposed to work on Win98, which it does not.

When this card works, it works OK. Unfortunately, about every 8th or 9th time the laptop is booted, the card doesn't work. After rebooting the computer four or five more times, the card finally works, and continues to work for another week or so. To me, this makes this card worse than useless. I will more than likely go back to the internal "G" wireless card in the laptop, which works every time.UPDATE:Since I wrote the above paragraph, this card has barely worked at all. The few seconds that I save uploading or downloading is more than offset by the hour or so that it takes to get this dog running. I just wasted an hour getting this card working so that I could update this review. I am going back to the internal 'G' system in the laptop, and putting this dog on eBay, where hopefully somebody can get it to work. What a waste of time and money. And, BTW, I have all the latest drivers, etc., and have tried every solution I could fine on the web. Steer clear of this Netgear product. (This from someone who uses Netgear exclusively, and has always been pretty happy with their products.)Update 2:I started to put this card on the most popular auction site, but didn't do it because many of these cards were available starting at less than a dollar, with NO bids. If you must try this card, get one on the auction site for a dollar plus shipping. BTW... my wireless 'G' is working fine.

Great product

Laptop would not detect card : (