D-LinkDWL-G650 Wireless Cardbus Adapter, 802.11g, 108Mbps

Thanks to my research on the Internet, I selected this DLink wireless PC Card. And what a great decision it was. It took 20 minutes to install this card in each laptop, and that included the time to download an updated firmware from support.dlink.com that doubled my connection speed!I get great performance, and even maintain acceptable performance on the floor below where the signal must find it was way through several walls and doors. In the same room as my router I get lightening fast performance that appears to be as fast as my wired connections.DLink provides a nice status and config tool as part of installtion, and that really eased the way into verifiying that all was operating properly. You can see signal strength and check on which wireless mode you are operating in.One suggestion, you should enable WEP to add security and encrpytion to your wireless network. It requires changes to both your router and the wireless card(s), but its pretty simple and I did not notice a big performance impact.If you are thinking about going wireless, this is a great card to select.

The card itself is more or less OK. Works with Windows 2000 and D-Link DI-614+ router.However, the software which comes with the card, AirPlus -- to find a network and configure the card is pretty bad. One has to be logged in as an administrator all the time to use it. If you have pre-configured a profile for a particular network (having logged in as an administrator), the card will work when you are logged in as a regular user. However, there is no way to see to which network you are connected, what is the signal strength or if you are connected at all!This is on top of the fact that the software is shipped on a CD with a virus (Dropper.Netbuser.A in autorun.exe file).Yet the hallmark of D-Link is its tech support: a characteristic combination of incompetence and rudeness. Once you get in through a busy line, as soon as you ask them something they don't know -- and they don't know much -- they simply hang up. Happened to me 3 times. The supervisor, whose name is Joe, just tries to compensate his lack of knowledge with agressiveness.The bottom line is -- why buy D-Link products and suffer if there are excellent products from other companies on the market?

After failing to get another wireless card working on my Linux laptop, I came across this Atheros-chipset card on Amazon. It comes at a relatively low price, around $15 including shipping.However, there are some issues to be aware of when using this card on a Linux system. First, early DWL-G650's (hardware version Ax) have a completely different chipset and, as far as I could tell, are not known to work at all under Linux. My guess is that those are the 54-mbps models. (Can anyone verify this?) Mine, which works, is a 108-mbps, hardware version B5.Second, you need the MadWifi driver to use this card. Ath5k, the newer alternative, didn't work for me. In Debian 4.0 Etch, MadWifi is a pain in the neck to set up. The madwifi-source package from Debian doesn't even compile after the recent kernel update to 2.6.24. You have to download a more recent version of the driver from madwifi.org and compile it. In other words, if you don't have some experience with compiling kernel modules, don't even think about getting this card. (Set-up may be easier in other Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, and maybe it will be easier in Lenny; I don't know.)That said, I am quite pleased with the card's performance and reliability. I have never had trouble connecting. (But I am on a university campus with access points everywhere, so I don't know how it would work in a home or city setting.)

I bought a "matching" DLINK wired/wireless router to go with this product (the DLINK DWL-G650 wireless cardbus adapter). After spending three hours on my own and about an hour on the phone with tech support, I got absolutely nothing.The computer works just fine with the router when connected with ethernet cable. This wireless card did nothing though. Even though it said I had a 100% signal strength, it would not communicate at all with the router. Sorry DLINK, your product doesn't work and is being returned.

This card is pretty weak, but also pretty cheap. If you just need an external card for around-the-house close-to-the-router usage, this card will work. If you plan to roam or need a reliable connection from afar, get a better card. It's a good card for the price.Works with both Windows XP and Ubuntu easily. (XP needs the driver utility installed *first*.)