Microsoft Broadband Networking Wireless Notebook Adapter - L21-00003

Excellent range. I bought this to replace the subpar, computer-crashing Linksys WPC11. The range is already noticeably better.

Now the bad. It does NOT work with any operating system but Wndows 98 through XP. This in itself isn't terrible if you have a Windows PC, but the sad part comes with the software. If you don't have IE already on your system it consumes a whopping 144 MB! Even with IE it takes up 80 MB of space. Compared to the less than 1 MB for any other card I've tried, including SMC and Linksys, this is plain sloppy. Also, while this card will support 128-bit WEP (wireless encryption protocol), that protocol is not as secure as you may be lead to believe, and not all access points support it. Add the massive security problems introduced by IE, which is required, and any protection you do get is negated.

That said, if you are using Windows, especially XP and don't care about wasting drive space because of sloppy software development practices, this is a good deal based on price, performance and ease of installation. I gave it low marks because of poor cross platform compatibility, terrible software and the false sense of security implied by the 128-bit WEP feature.