Review on Cisco Linksys WPC54G Wireless G Notebook Adapter by Troy Jennings

I ordered a Linksys WRT54G router through Revain along with an accompanying PCMCIA WPC54G card for my Gateway Solo laptop. My goal was simply to carry Comcast digital cable access in my 2,000 square foot home at the faster 802.11g speeds. I wanted to surf the Internet from the comfortable sofa in the TV room or the cozy armchair in the living room. My choice is no wires. I've never installed a network, so I lost a lot of literature, Revain reviews and other sources of information: I just went with a well-known brand at a reasonable price. I installed the router in about 20 minutes using the CD that came with it. The lights blinked and the hard connection to my laptop recognized the router. Flipped 5 inch bunny ears and appeared to be in business. Overall pretty seamless. I had high hopes that I would be surfing wirelessly soon. This was pretty exciting for me as I'm still using Windows 98SE and was afraid I might run into trouble. The installation of the associated PCMCIA card WPC54G did not go so well. Again I ran it according to the instructions on the installation CD and although the Linksys software seemed to install without any problems, when I tried to install a program called "Odyssey" from Funk Software, Inc. the process worked. continue to search for drivers, prompts you to insert the Microsoft Windows 98SE CD into the drive. I don't have the Microsoft diskette, but I have an OEM version of Gateway which appears to have Microsoft Windows 98SE but does not contain the specific drivers that Odyssey needs. In summary, I spent several hours browsing the Microsoft, Linksys, and Funk Software knowledge base pages, downloading stuff, downloading and restarting my laptop before giving up and going to bed in frustration. I tried again in the morning and somehow, I still don't know how, I hit the right combination of configured protocols, which suddenly turned on the PCMCIA card. I went from zero to eighty instantly and my curses turned to exclamations of joy. The best online help came from Funk Software, where I found a customer service representative at the helpdesk who answered my emails. His solution: Since I had a basic home office network (not an enterprise solution) and wasn't using a RADIUS server (whatever that is?), I didn't need Odyssey and gave me good instructions on how to root it out on my PC. I'm still not entirely sure what Odyssey is up to, so maybe I'm missing an advantage? However, the router and card in my laptop communicate well throughout the house. No connections further than 3 walls and 150 feet. The speed is great. I've set up what I think is a rudimentary firewall (checked the box labeled "Firewall Enabled") and enabled WEP 128. I hope to take WPA further and I hope Odyssey isn't part of this setup, but overall I'm happy with the product, glad I didn't have to pay a consultant, and am wirelessly sending this report to Revain from the comfort of my chair ! User Experience: No. Total installation time: 5 hours Biggest problem: WPC54G card firmware is missing drivers for Win98SE. Observation: If TVs came with this hellish alphabet of protocols (WEP, DHCP, DNS, IP, etc.) we'd still be listening to family radio for hours!