Home > Consumer Reviews > Linksys WPC54G Wireless-G Notebook Adapter

This is a review I wrote for the router hub and the PC Card. I had already submitted it for the hub and am submitting it here also for the card. The entire review is relevant to both parts of this system. One thing I forgot to mention was that I had called Dell to see what they had available,and they were using a mix of Linksys parts as well. So I decided to go direct with Linksys equipment. Here is the review as submitted.
For an item that was not even available in Best Buy and the other major stores when I first bought it from Amazon, and that I received it in only a couple of days is knowledge enough to make this a winning situation.
What about hookup and use? Another 5 star performance. If you have never hooked up a wireless network before, take the advice of the quick start guide that comes with the unit, and use their included CD. They strongly recommended that you use the CD rather than manually configure it. Having seen the problems that some others were having with setup, only to be resolved (some of them) by exactly following the directions, you can see, that is the best way to go. The setup using the CD is about as easy as learning how to open a refrigerator door for the first time. Shutting off what they tell you to shut off, and turning on what and when they tell you to turn things on, results in a delightful install. Not even one glitch. The CD determines your internet connection, then it determines your system configuration, asks a few questions, and bingo you are up and running.
I install the PC Card for laptops as well, and that is just as easy to install. Within 10 minutes your surfing the web from all over the house. No Wires !
Pertaining to the speed issue: Remember when I discuss this that their is a difference between the speed inside of your network, and the the speed you are connecting to the web. I got 54MBps while I was in the same room. When I went into the living room, it went to very good, instead of excellent, and gave me 37MBps. Let's get a perspective here. A standard modem works at 56kbps tops. This router works at 54MBps that's megabyte not kilobyte. Their are 1024 kilobytes in every megabyte. So 54 Megabytes per second is about a thousand times faster than a standard modem. When hooked up to a Verizon DSL basic connection, you are running at a maximum of 700 plus kilobits on the download end, and 100 to 150 upload speed. I know I am getting specific, but the point I am making is that it does not matter what the connection speed you are running at any given moment, based on how close the base unit is to the PC card. What is important is that your internet connection will never even approach the speed capabilities of this router, so don't hassle yourself with any concerns over varying connect speeds of the wireless network.
Broadband hooked up to this wireless setup flies. As soon as you click on a site, it appears on the screen.
Faster connect speeds are important when communicating across the network, between machines, like when backing up drives across the network. For that reason, the faster N designated wireless is a little bit more expensive, but a lot faster than G. To go a step farther the ultimate in inter network communications, a hard wired gigabit or 2 gigabit connection rules. So the ultimate is to use an N connection for your router, which is your connection to the slower web, and use the faster N to a portable device, then hook up a gigabit switch, to run your hard wired connections between your devices in the network. I guess I am getting off on a tangent here, so back to the device at hand, which is still the most popular selling adapter.
Anyhow, just for reference, hooking up a DSL, or a broadband cable modem that was supplied by Comcast, with the Windows XP operating system, installation was as near automatic as can be. They do supply instructions when using Windows ME, 98 etc, that includes one more step than XP.
All in all this is a 5 star piece of equipment. Follow the directions exactly. It is easy. Hope this helps. This is the reason why I have a website, to help people with their installations. Did you know that as much as 30 percent of the wireless network products are sent back, because people give up trying to install them? Let's all save Amazon from the return product blues. I am here to help.

I will echo some of the positive things people have written about this product. I bought both the Wireless-G adapter and the Wireless-G router (v 1.1) from Linksys. I have used Linksys in the past and been quite happy with their stuff. In this situation I was pleased as i could be with the setup. I read the instructions mostly so that I would know what order to proceed in and i would say I was surfing wirelessly with no noticable loss of speed in about 10 minutes.

I can walk around my small NYC apartment with an "excellent" signal. Of course I'd expect that because there is no more than one wall between the AP and the laptop in any given poin in the apt.

That is where the good news ends. The bad news has two flavors,

1) the card gets extremely hot. I'm talking about too hot to touch and I'd guess it is up around 130-140 degrees F sometimes. It will heat up the entire left side of my laptop.

2) it disconnects sometimes. I wish i could find SOME pattern but it just seems to disconnect completely at random. it will disconnect when I am right on top of the router. Sometimes it will just come back on its own and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't I'll reboot, sometimes that works, sometimes not. I have checked some of the more obvious things one can find online regarding this issue and have found no real help. The driver and firmware are both up to date.

Aside from those two things i was a little bit troubled that the default configuration, even if you're all Linksys, is VERY vulnerable to attack. In fact, the default configuration has security that reminds me of what Microsoft thought security was when they were turning out Win 3.11. Suffice to say you'll be spending some time configuring your network if you don't want to be sharing it with everyone in the building.

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Update

I did eventually figure out that 2.4Ghz phones will interfere with the signal that this wireless router uses. If you have a 2.4Ghz phone or anyone in an apt near you does then that could be your problem.

As already mentioned by other reviewers, this card does not work on my Compaq Presario 900 running WinXP. The laptop freezes with 100% CPU utilization as soon as the card is installed. I've tried all the suggestions ranging from the latest drivers, disabling various items in the device manager and configuring WinXP zero config. wireless service. All to no avail! Customer support was sub-par, with the representative basically reading off a script. If you own a Compaq or HP laptop, please save yourself the trouble and DO NOT buy this until someone releases a fix!

!!UPDATE 4/1/03!!: This is no April Fools, Linksys has released a beta driver that did work for my Presario laptop. It can be found on their driver download page. In small print it says: "If you are having problems using this Adapter and you have a Texas Instrument CardBus Controller, please download this driver here."
I needed to install the driver in safe mode, but now it's smooth surfing!

I installed the WPC54G with the WRT54G Router on a Sony GR-390 with Windows XP. The Router configuration went well using the included disk. After going to the Linksys site and downloading the most current driver for the PC card, the PC card installation seemed ok. The problem was that the PC card showed inactive and would not communicate with the router. I ran msconfig and checked the services tab and did not have Wireless Zero Configuration on the list. This is required to configure the wireless connection. Sony (and probably other OEMs) elected not to start this process in the Windows Registry. This is most likely the problem many XP users are having. It can be corrected by editing the Windows Registry to automatically start WZCSVC, but this should not be attempted unless you know how (if you must ask how, you should not be trying it). After making this change and using the Linksys knowledge base article ID KB10934338 mentioned in another review, everything works well.

I bought this along with the Linksys WRT54G wireless router. I have a Sony Vaio laptop with Windows XP. The setup was easy using the included instructions and Windows Zero Wireless Configuration. New drivers (ver3.20.21.0) are available from Linksys. The range is excellent in my house, at about 100feet through 1 wall the signal strength is good at 48Kbps. Using it outside I can connect at 11Kbps at about 200 ft from the house. The provided instructions are horrible for configuring security other than WEP 128 for WIndows XP.

Linksys supports the newer more secure WPA protocol and I highly recommend using it since WEP 128 is almost useless to prevent specific attacks against your network. You should use WPA-PSK (Pre-Shared Key) with TKIP encryption on the router and on the properties of the wireless card. Though Linksys has supported WPA since May you won't find anything about how to configure it on the card and router in their knowledge base. The Key can be any letter, number and a few symbols from 8-63 characters long. You can also set the Group Key renewal 0-99,999 sec. I set it to 0. Under the IEEE 802.1x authentication set the EAP type to PEAP and uncheck boxes for "Authenticate as computer when information is available" and "Authenticate as guest..." unless you use these features. Also, change the SSID and don't broadcast it and use MAC filtering to lockdown your network.