Home > Consumer Reviews > Linksys PCM100 EtherFast 10/100 Integrated PC Card

The beauty of this card is that the RJ45 receptacle is attached permanently to the card itself, not at the end of a separate adapter cord that always seems to break or get misplaced.

The PC Card is designed so if you insert it into the top slot in your notebook computer, you'll still be able to fit a second card (without a port adapter) in the lower slot.

It takes just a minute to load the card's driver, and you're off and running.

Another nifty feature is that the card has Link + Activity status LEDs on the receptacle port, so you can tell if you have a good link to the LAN.

A pleasant and very welcome alternative to the 'dongle' type LAN adapter for the Laptop PC. It was a breeze in my Windows XP machine, and Windows 98 worked fine. Windows 95 required the setup disk, but a very good performer. Although hard to mess up, Good job still for led placement and usefulness Linksys.

THE ONLY COMPLAINT -
If you have a INSPIRON 5000 series, or similar form factor, you know that the power plug was ignorantly placed next to the PCMCIA slots. Therefore the size of this card's slightly oversized plug-in 'port' was uncomfortable. Hope this was helpful.

I cannot really tell the difference between this card and other ones that cost twice as much. It provides the necessary functions, mainly a means to access a high-speed network, and it seems fairly robust. Also, the installation was very quick and easy, just plug it in and install the software that comes on the CD (All this takes less than 5 minutes). I have been using this product for six months now and I currently have no complaints. It works fine, I can download at very fast rates, and I have not had any problems with it.

I have heard other reports in addition to the one below about how installation is tricky with Windows ME. The card works just fine in Windows ME, but either they have indeed updated the manual or else nobody else reads it.

Don't follow the instructions on the Quick Installation sheet, use the actual manual.

Basically, the problems start when it asks for the Windows ME CD (which very few laptops come with). As the manual points out, you must tell it that instead of looking for the drivers on the windows CD that it should be looking on the A drive.

Installation took me about 2 minutes and the card has been working great.

I was walking through Fry's the other day and i came across one of these cards. Since it was an open box it was on sale for practically nothing. I decided to try it with nothing to lose.

My brother and i have two XP PC's connected to a linksys router with a DSL connection. We also have a laptop running win98 which has our old scanner and minolta digital camera running off it. (Why minolta doesnt have an XP update for its camera's beats the hell out of me.) With this card i thought this would be a perfect way to introduce a third PC to our network.

I know how difficult it is to set up home networks. Everyone complains about tech support so i really don't bother with them. Fortunately my brother and i have many (painful) years of experience with trial and error setting up networks so it has become somewhat easy for us now. However when Linksys was introduced to us let me tell you that it really is the best. We dont go with anything else other then linksys. No company has dedicated itself to networking then linksys. Its website is a testament to how dedicated linksys is to making great products and supporting them even when they are discontinued. Its online guide is unrivaled. Not even D-Link or 3com offers that type of support.

Many people on other reviews here experienced a little difficulty but not at the fault of this product. One person using WinMe could not install it. It is quite known that WinMe is inherently flawed particularly with networking. Another person had to install everytime they removed the card. That may be a hardware configuration conflict. If you read all the low reviews of this product they are all software or hardware conflicts. Not a defective card.

As for this card. there really is nothing much more to say. I plugged it in, installed the software, plugged in the network wire and was surfing at 1.5mbps and transfering pictures from my scanner and camera at 100mbps. It was literally that simple. Another great feature of this product is it has a link indicator with lets you know that you are actually connected to the network even if by configuration you are not. The only bad thing I can think of is that its difficult to pull out those RJ45 connectors but I don't plan to unplug it from the network anyway so its really no big deal.

Grab this product if you are looking for a PC card for your laptop. Even though I was lucky enough to find one for 10 bucks quite frankly I would have paid 4 or 5 times more for it.